The claims against Scott were found in the end to amount to £130,000. All the world knows the course Scott elected to take; how he at once put his affairs in the hands of trustees, and became, by his own offer, the vassal of his creditors for life, toiling henceforward to pay their claims, not to enrich himself. From his side it was a noble sacrifice, as noble as any ever offered on the altar of honour. If the debts had been real, if he had actually had in possession the sum and used it, no other course would have been possible salvo honore. But commercial debts, the largely fictitious product of stamps and paper, should have been paid commercially. Such a course, he himself said, he might have advised a client to take, and it would have saved him much sorrow, pain, and trouble, without harming any man. However, he preferred it otherwise, and received the news of the acceptance of his offer as if it had been a mighty favour. He wrote in his Journal: 'This is handsome and confidential, and must warm my best efforts to get them out of the scrape.'
The agreement was finally, not of course without harassment and difficulty, passed. He was left in possession of Abbotsford, his official salary was left him to support his family, everything else was sold for behoof of the creditors, and all his future literary gains were assigned to them in advance. On March 15th he left his house in Castle Street, and on that night he wrote in his Journal: 'I never reckoned upon a change in this particular so long as I held an office in the Court of Session. In all my former changes of residence it was from good to better—this is retrograding. I leave this house for sale, and I cease to be an Edinburgh citizen, in the sense of being a proprietor, which my father and I have been for sixty years at least. So farewell, poor 39, and may you never harbour worse people than those who now leave you.'
Very soon after the departure from Castle Street a second calamity, probably hastened by the former, overtook the family. Lady Scott died at Abbotsford on the 14th of May. Scott, who was engaged in his Court duties at Edinburgh, and staying now in Mrs. Brown's lodgings, North St. David Street, reached Abbotsford late in the evening of the 15th. His weakly daughter Anne, worn out with attendance, was hysterical when he arrived. The entries in his Journal are sadly touching: 'When I contrast what this place now is with what it has been not long since, I think my heart will break. Lonely, aged, deprived of my family—all but poor Anne; an impoverished, an embarrassed man, deprived of the sharer of my thoughts, who could always talk down my sense of the calamitous apprehensions which break the heart that must bear them alone.'
The funeral took place on the 22nd at Dryburgh. Scott mentions very kindly the Rev. E. B. Ramsay, who performed the funeral service. This gentleman afterwards became famous, when Dean of Edinburgh, by his well-known book Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life.
And now Scott found the task he had imposed upon himself bracing him against despondency. He returned to Edinburgh and his old 'task,' thankful that it was of a graver nature (the Life of Napoleon), and determined to fight on 'for the sake of the children and of my own character.'
A visit to London and Paris was necessitated in October by his work on Napoleon. The change did him good, and Lockhart mentions that his behaviour under misfortunes so terrible had gained for him 'a deep and respectful sympathy, which was brought home to him in a way not to be mistaken.' This expedition for information had cost him £200—a matter for serious consideration in his changed circumstances.
CHAPTER LXI
House in Walker Street—Ill-health—Extraordinary Labours—Article on Hoffman—Kindness to Literary People—Murray's Party—Theatrical Fund Dinner—Life of Napoleon—Payment of £28,000 to Creditors—The Lockharts at Portobello—Grandfather's Tales—Domestic Happiness—Visit of Adolphus.
On resuming his duties in Edinburgh at the end of November (1826), Scott went to reside in a furnished house in Walker Street, which he had taken for the winter. In his Journal, 27th November, he says: 'Walter came and supped with us, which diverted some heavy thoughts. It is impossible not to compare this return to Edinburgh with others in more happy times. But we should rather recollect under what distress of mind I took up my lodgings in Mrs. Brown's last summer, and then the balance weighs deeply on the favourable side. This house is comfortable and convenient.' It was for the sake of his daughter's company that he had taken this house. The winter, however, proved a weary time. His incessant toil at his Napoleon was hampered by continual ill-health—successive attacks of rheumatism, which might well have excused him from work of any kind. But his watchword was, 'I am now at my oar, and I must row hard.' To crown all his troubles, the weather was exceptionally cold and trying. He could not but think often of the days when rain and cold and long night journeys did him no harm, and he was painfully conscious of a speedy break-up of the hard-wrought machine. Bad nights were the rule, and he was sometimes sick with mere pain. Sometimes he notes his work, proof-sheets and the like, as 'finished mechanically.' 'All well,' he ends up on 21st December, 'if the machine would but keep in order, but "The spinning-wheel is auld and stiff." I shall never see the threescore and ten, and shall be summed up at a discount. No help for it, and no matter either.' Yet, even in these circumstances, he wrote more than his task. One of these minor pieces was an article on Hoffman for the Foreign Quarterly, a review edited by R. P. Gillies. It was done purely as a kindness to Gillies, giving, as Lockhart says, a poor brother author £100 at the expense of considerable time and drudgery to himself. He had done the same in numberless instances, often for persons whose only claim on him was that of the common vocation. At this time he naturally went but little into society, but his enjoyment of good company could still be keen. On spending an evening with John A. Murray, he says: 'When I am out with a party of my Opposition friends, the day is often merrier than when with our own set. Is it because they are cleverer? Jeffrey and Harry Cockburn are, to be sure, very extraordinary men; yet it is not owing to that entirely. I believe both parties meet with the feeling of something like novelty—we have not worn out our jests in daily contact.'
On the 23rd of February 1827 he presided at the famous Theatrical Fund Dinner, at which he publicly admitted his authorship of the Waverley Novels. All he says of the incident is, 'Meadowbank taxed me with the novels, and to end that farce at once I pleaded guilty, so that splore is ended.' Of course, as a matter of fact, the secret had been an open one from the day of the first meeting of Ballantyne's creditors. When Scott was thinking of himself as liable monstrari digito as the partner of an insolvent firm, every one else was thinking of him as the now-revealed 'author of Waverley.' 'Scott ruined,' Earl Dudley exclaimed on hearing the news, 'the author of Waverley ruined! Good God! let every man to whom he has given months of delight give him a sixpence, and he will rise to-morrow morning richer than Rothschild!' That was probably what was in the mind of every man who gazed on Scott's calm, honest face in the first days of trouble.