CHAPTER LXIII
Visit of Richardson and Cockburn to Abbotsford—Sir Walter at Home—Anecdote of Cranstoun—Patterson's Anecdotes—The Burke and Hare Murders—Anecdote of Cockburn—Dr. Knox—Catholic Emancipation Bill—Meeting in Edinburgh—Death of Terry and Shortreed—Severe Illness of Scott—Death of Tom Purdie.
John Richardson, 'the learned Peerage lawyer,' was the intimate of Henry Cockburn, and the favoured and highly prized friend of Sir Walter Scott. He tells a good fishing story of earlier days when he visited Sir Walter at Ashestiel. Richardson was fishing in the Tweed, Scott walking by his side, when, after the capture of numerous fine trout, he hooked something greater and unseen. Scott became greatly excited: to their common alarm the rod broke; but climbing the bank and holding the rod down, the angler at last managed to bring his mysterious prize round a small peninsula towards the bank. Then 'Sir Walter jumped into the water, seized him, and threw him out on the grass. Tom Purdie came up a little time after, and was certainly rather discomposed at my success. "It will be some sea brute," he observed; but he became satisfied that it was a fine river-trout, and such as, he afterwards admitted, had not been killed in Tweed for twenty years; and when I moved down the water, he went, as Sir Walter afterwards observed, and gave it a kick on the head, observing, "To be ta'en by the like o' him frae Lunnon!"'
The two friends met again in very different form in 1828, when Cockburn accompanied Richardson to visit Scott at Abbotsford. Apropos of this visit we have happily a very fine description by Cockburn of Scott and his talk at this time. He describes his appearance thus: 'When fitted up for dinner, he was like any other comfortably ill-dressed gentleman. But in the morning, with the large coarse jacket, great stick, and leathern cap, he was Dandy Dinmont or Dirk Hatteraick—a poacher or a smuggler.' Scott gave them an anecdote of an early anticipation regarding the professional prospects of their friend George Cranstoun, who had been recently raised to the bench. Just after being called to the Bar, Cranstoun, William Erskine, and Scott went to dine with an old Selkirk writer, a devoted drinker of the old school. Cranstoun, who was never anything at a debauch, was driven off the field, with a squeamish stomach and a woful countenance, shamefully early. Erskine, always ambitious, adhered to the bowl somewhat longer; but Scott who, as he told us, 'was at home with the hills and the whisky punch,' not only triumphed over these two, but very nearly over the landlord. As they were mounting their horses to ride home, the entertainer let the other two go without speaking to them; but he embraced Scott, assuring him that he would rise high. 'And I'll tell ye what, Maister Walter, that lad Cranstoun may get to the tap o' the bar if he can; but tak my word for't—it's no be by drinking.'
In his Journal, 4th April 1829, it is mentioned that one David Patterson wrote to Sir Walter to suggest that he should write on the subject of the Burke and Hare murders, and to offer him for materials his 'invaluable collection of anecdotes.' 'Did ever one hear of the like?' adds Scott. 'The scoundrel has been the companion and patron of such atrocious murderers and kidnappers, and he has the impudence to write to any decent man!'
Burke and Hare were two desperadoes who, for about two years, had carried on a regular trade of murder in Edinburgh, the scene being a gloomy back house, recently demolished, in a close near the north corner of the West Port and Lady Lawson Street. Here they had disposed of sixteen victims, selling all the bodies to the doctors for dissection. The popular excitement when the discovery was made, and when Burke, Hare, and Helen Macdougal were brought to trial, was something unexampled in the city. 'No case,' says Lord Cockburn, 'ever struck the public heart or imagination with greater horror. And no wonder. The regular demand for anatomical subjects, and the high prices given, held out a constant premium to murder; and when it was shown to what danger this exposed the unprotected, every one felt himself living among persons to whom murder was a trade.' At this time Dr. Robert Knox, a very clever surgeon, was the most popular lecturer in the medical school, and into his hands most of the bodies had come. The populace fully believed that he had known that the bodies were those of murdered persons. Few could believe him entirely innocent—a supposition, of course, inconsistent with his anatomical skill. He was, however, acquitted of all blame by the report of an independent and influential committee, and remained in Edinburgh till 1841. Lord Cockburn states that all the Edinburgh anatomists incurred great odium, which he considered most unjust. Tried in view of the invariable, and at that time necessary practice of the profession, the anatomists were, in his opinion, 'spotlessly correct, and Knox the most correct of them all.' It was Cockburn who, as counsel for the defence, secured the acquittal of Helen Macdougal. A story went round that, on finishing his address to the jury and observing its effect, he whispered, 'Infernal hag! the gudgeons swallow it!' This was utterly untrue. The evidence was really insufficient to warrant a conviction, and the defence was, of course, entirely honest. Of the two assassins, Hare escaped by turning King's Evidence, and Burke, the less revolting of the two, was hanged. On the evening of the execution Scott wrote, 'The mob, which was immense, demanded Knox and Hare, but though greedy for more victims, received with shouts the solitary wretch who found his way to the gallows out of five or six who seem not less guilty than he.' Knox's brilliant career was ruined by the incident. He passed the last twenty years of his life in London, in a precarious struggle for a poor existence, and died in 1862.
In March 1829 Edinburgh had a great meeting in favour of Wellington and Peel's measure of Catholic Emancipation. Scott and a number of Tories supported it. His opinion was that the measure ought to satisfy all lovers of peace. But he had his doubts about Pat, 'who with all his virtues, is certainly not the most sensible person in the world.' The petition got up by the meeting was signed by eight thousand persons, but the two opposing petitions were much more numerously signed. When the first petition was read in the House of Commons, the name of Sir Walter Scott was received with a great shout of applause, which led Sir Robert Peel to send him a special and very cordial letter of thanks. Of this petition Cockburn, who was prominent in the whole affair, declares that the eight thousand who signed were of a higher and more varied class than ever concurred in any political measure in Edinburgh.
About the middle of May appeared Anne of Geierstein, which, as Lockhart has put it, may almost be called the last work of Scott's imaginative genius. To the reader who peruses this story, keeping in mind the time and the circumstances in which it was written, it is full of passages which touchingly depict the past and present emotions of the writer's own career.
The next two months deprived him of two old friends—Terry and Shortreed—with whom, he writes, 'many recollections die.' Meanwhile there was great comfort in the success of his Magnum Opus—the collected works.
At the end of this year, 1829, eight volumes had appeared, and the monthly sale was thirty-five thousand. The effect on his spirits was gratifying to his friends, for he had been almost prostrated by fears and anxiety about the health of his eldest son. Then came the first warning of the end. 'Good news of Walter' was succeeded by a serious and alarming attack of illness—in fact a threatening of apoplexy. He obtained relief by cupping, but he had apparently no delusions as to the meaning of the stroke. Writing to tell Walter of his recovery, he talks of coming death, and in view of 'the pro-di-gi-ous sale' of the Novels, he says, 'I should be happy to die a free man; and I am sure you will all be kind to poor Anne, who will miss me most. I don't intend to die a minute sooner than I can help for all this; but when a man takes to making blood instead of water, he is tempted to think on the possibility of his soon making earth.'