Chapter 10

The New Town of Edinburgh, as seen by Scott and his contemporaries, was simply a product of the mason. The houses were plain three-story buildings, without ornament and without variety. They stood end-on in long barrack-like blocks. 'Our jealousy of variety,' says Cockburn, 'and our association of magnificence with sameness, was really curious. If a builder ever attempted (which, however, to do them justice, they very seldom did) to deviate so far from the established paltriness as to carry up the front wall so as to hide the projecting slates, or to break the roof by a Flemish storm window, or to turn his gable to the street, there was an immediate outcry; and if the law allowed our burgh Edile, the Dean of Guild, to interfere, he was sure to do so.' Mere convenience was the only guiding principle, and it was the same with the famous 'Plan' for laying out the streets. Instead of taking a hint from the strikingly picturesque irregularity of the romantic 'Old Town,' the projectors studiously endeavoured to make everything as unlike it as possible. The 'Plan' laid down the streets in long straight lines, divided to an inch, and all to the same number of inches, by intersecting straight lines at right angles.Well might a few men of taste hold up protesting hands and exclaim, What a site did nature give us for our New Town! Yet what insignificance in its Plan! What poverty in all its details! But the most of the citizens were quite contented with the Plan and the buildings. They thought the idea of three main streets intersected by six cross streets at right angles and at regular distances, a perfect inspiration of genius. They talked of its beauty and elegance, and fondly believed that the New Town had few equals in Europe. Certainly in one point the contrast with the Old Town was in favour of the New. The streets were made spacious and broad, giving the inestimable boon of free air. Along with the New Town there gradually grew another monument, gigantic in every sense, of the taste of Edinburgh citizens—'the Mound,' as it is still called, a monument which justifies the city's love and pride in being at least unique. It took fifty years to collect, it is eight hundred feet long, its height at the north end is sixty feet, and at the south end one hundred. Like every other great work, the Mound has had its detractors. Lord Cockburn said of it, 'The creation of that abominable incumbrance, the "Earthen Mound," by which the valley it abridges and deforms was sacrificed for a deposit of rubbish, was not only permitted without a murmur to be slowly raised, but throughout all its progress was applauded as a noble accumulation.' It was originally suggested by a Lawnmarket shopkeeper. Even at the present day there are some who have their doubts about its beauty and elegance, but they are easily silenced by recalling its vastness and its original cheapness. The Mound, in fact, is here to stay.After the peace, when Europe was immediately covered with travellers, it became known to some Edinburgh natives that there were better things in city architecture than the 'regular, elegant, and commodious' houses of New Edinburgh. 'Not one of them, whether from taste, or conceit, or mere chattering—but it all did good—failed to contrast the littleness of almost all that the people of Edinburgh had yet done, with the general picturesque grandeur and the unrivalled sites of their city. It was about this time that the foolish phrase, "The Modern Athens," began to be applied to the capital of Scotland; a sarcasm, or a piece of affected flattery, when used in a moral sense; but just enough if meant only as a comparison of the physical features of the two places.'The existence of a New Town soon forced on the opening up of the city by adequate routes of access. The narrow, steep, and crooked 'wynds' of the Old Town had been constructed in the days when to keep enemies out was the first, indeed the only consideration. Now it became a primary necessity to provide broad, open, and convenient approaches from all sides. The citizens soon enjoyed the privilege of issuing by wide and pleasant highways, conducting to the open fields. And fortunately the buildings now erected beside these spacious approaches were not dominated by the 'Plan.' Cockburn himself considered the buildings 'very respectable; the owners being always tempted to allure the spreading population by laying out their land attractively. Hence Newington, Leith Walk, the grounds of Inverleith, the road to Corstorphine, and to Queensferry, and indeed all the modern approaches, which lead in every direction through most comfortable suburbs.'It is clear from Lord Cockburn's invaluable testimony that the idea of the more free and daring attempts in architecture, which have now given the New Town a character so different from its 'planned' uniformity and elegance, originated immediately after the peace. 'The influence of these circumstances can only be appreciated by those who knew Edinburgh during the war. It is they alone who can see the beauty of the bravery which the Queen of the North has since been putting on. There were more schemes, and pamphlets, and discussions, and anxiety about the improvement of our edifices and prospects within ten years after the war ceased, than throughout the whole of the preceding one hundred and fifty years.'Suburban Edinburgh of to-day rejoices in a profusion of trees. Had the same taste been predominant at this period, how different even the centre of the city might have been. It is tantalising to imagine the pictures left us of what existed in those bygone days. 'There was no Scotch city more strikingly graced by individual trees and by groups of them than Edinburgh, since I knew it, used to be. How well the ridge of the Old Town was set off by a bank of elms that ran along the front of James' Court, and stretched eastward over the ground now partly occupied by the Bank of Scotland. Some very respectable trees might have been spared to grace the Episcopal Chapel of St. Paul in York Place. There was one large tree near its east end which was so well placed that some people conjectured it was on its account that the Chapel was set down there. I was at a consultation in John Clerk's house, hard by, when that tree was cut. On hearing that it was actually down we ran out, and well did John curse the Huns. The old aristocratic gardens of the Canongate were crowded with trees, and with good ones. There were several on the Calton Hill; seven, not ill-grown, on its very summit. And all Leith Walk and Lauriston, including the ground round Heriot's Hospital, was fully set with wood. A group was felled about the year 1826 which stood to the west of St. John's Chapel, on the opposite side of the Lothian Road, and formed a beautiful termination of all the streets which join near that point. Moray Place, in the same way, might have been richly decorated with old and respectable trees. But they were all murdered.... I tried to save a very picturesque group, some of which waved over the wall at the west end of the jail on the Calton Hill. I succeeded with two trees; but in about four years they also disappeared. The sad truth is that the extinction of foliage, and the unbroken display of their bright freestone, is of itself a first object with both our masons and their employers. The wooded gardens that we have recently acquired are not inconsistent with this statement. There was no competition between them and building. It is our horror of the direct combination of trees with masonry, and our incapacity to effect it, that I complain of. No apology is thought necessary for murdering a tree; many for preserving it.'CHAPTER LIThe 'Jury Court'—Chief-Commissioner Adam—His Work and Success—Friendship with Scott—Character of Adam by Scott—The Blairadam Club—Anecdotes—Death of Lord Adam.Trial by jury in civil cases was introduced into Scotland by an enactment of the year 1815. The first case was tried on 22nd January 1816. The change thus inaugurated was considered by reformers 'one of the most important events in the progress of our law.' Though meeting with strong opposition, headed by the old judges, the introduction of the new system was managed successfully. It implied the arrangement of a separate court, and the appointment of a special presiding judge trained to English practice. The Lord Chief-Commissioner was the Right Hon. William Adam, of Blairadam, and he was assisted by two other judges, Lords Pitmilly and Meadowbank. Adam was then sixty-five years of age. Cockburn says that he was handicapped by extravagant expectations of what he was to do. He describes him as 'the person who had first fought Fox, and then been his friend; who had spoken in debate with Pitt; managed the affairs of Royal Dukes; been the standing counsel of such clients as the East India Company and the Bank of England, and in great practice in Parliamentary Committees.' His appearance was that of a farming gentleman. He had a clear distinct voice, and an admirable manner, but his great defect is said to have been 'obscurity of judicial speech.' Lord Glenlee, listening for a long time, without getting any definite idea, to his well-sounding sentences full of confusion, made the epigram, 'He speaks as if he were an Act of Parliament.'We have the testimony of Lord Cockburn to the success of his work. 'No other man could have done his work. He had to guide a vessel over shoals and among rocks. This was his special duty, and he did it admirably. He protected his court from prejudices which, if not subdued by his patience and dexterity, would have crushed it any week. So far as we are to retain civil trial by jury in this country, we shall owe it to him personally. When in 1830 the Jury Court ceased to exist as a separate court his vocation was at an end; and he retired with the respect and the affection of the whole legal profession and of the public.'Such was the task of the man with whom Scott was now to be connected during the rest of his life in a constant interchange of hospitality, and whom he so frequently mentions in hisJournalwith epithets of esteem and respect. Their acquaintance practically dated from Adam's appointment, but soon grew into the closest friendship. The account of their connection in theJournal(January 1826) must be quoted for the vivid, almost startling light it throws on Scott's own peculiarities.'I have taken kindly to him as one of the most pleasant, kind-hearted, benevolent, and pleasing men I have ever known. It is high treason among the Tories to express regard for him, or respect for the Jury Court in which he presides. I was against that experiment as much as any one. But it is an experiment, and the establishment (which the fools will not perceive) is the only thing which I see likely to give some prospects of ambition to our Bar. As for the Chief-Commissioner, I dare say he jobs, as all other people of consequence do, in elections, and so forth. But he is the personal friend of the King, and the decided enemy of whatever strikes at the constitutional rights of the monarch. Besides, I love him for the various changes which he has endured through life, and which have been so great as to make him entitled to be regarded in one point of view as the most fortunate—in the other, the most unfortunate—man in the world. He has gained and lost two fortunes by the same good luck, and the same rash confidence, which raised, and now threatens, mypeculium. And his quiet, honourable, and generous submission under circumstances more painful than mine,—for the loss of world's wealth was to him aggravated by the death of his youngest and darling son in the West Indies—furnished me at the time and now with a noble example. So the Tories and Whigs may go be d—d together, as names that have disturbed old Scotland, and torn asunder the most kindly feelings since the first day they were invented.... I cannot permit that strife to "mix its waters with my daily meal," those waters of bitterness which poison all mutual love and confidence betwixt the well-disposed on either side.'Adam was fond of society, in which 'nothing could exceed his delightfulness.' The Blairadam Club was for many years (from 1818 onwards) an institution. It was an annual gathering at midsummer of a few bosom friends, among them Scott, William Clerk, and Sir Adam Ferguson. The friends spent a day or two together, and generally made it a gay and happy occasion. 'We hire a light coach-and-four, and scour the country in every direction in quest of objects of curiosity.' The last meeting attended by Scott was in 1830, when he says: 'Our meeting was cordial, but our numbers diminished. Will Clerk has a bad cold, Thomas Thomson is detained, but the Chief-Commissioner, Admiral Adam (son of the host), Sir Adam, John Thomson and I, make an excellent concert. The day was execrable (wet). But Sir Adam was in high fooling, and we had an amazing deal of laughing.' It is pathetic, in the midst of this, to see how he fretted to be at home, in order to be at work again. In theJournalwe come across some remarks or anecdotes of Adam's, of which one or two may be given. 'I came home with Lord Chief-Commissioner Adam. He told me a dictum of old Sir Gilbert Elliot, speaking of his uncles. "No chance of opulence," he said, "is worth the risk of a competence." It was not the thought of a great man, but perhaps that of a wise one.'Again, 'Dined with Chief-Commissioner,—Admiral Adam, W. Clerk, Thomson and I. The excellent old man was cheerful at intervals—at times sad, as was natural. A good blunder he told us, occurred in the Annandale case, which was a question partly of domicile. It was proved that leaving Lochwood, the Earl had given up hiskainandcarriages; this an English counsel contended was the best of all possible proofs that the noble Earl designed an absolute change of residence, since he laid aside hiswalking-stickand hiscoach.'[1][1]Kainin Scots Law means 'payment in kind': carriages, 'services in driving with horse and cart.'Lockhart has recorded that 'this most amiable and venerable gentleman, my dear and kind friend, died at Edinburgh, on the 17th February 1839, in the eighty-ninth year of his age. He retained his strong mental faculties in their perfect vigour to the last days of his long life, and with them all the warmth of social feelings which had endeared him to all who were so happy as to have any opportunity of knowing him.'CHAPTER LII1816—TheAntiquary—Death of Major John Scott—The Aged Mother—Buying Land—The Ballantynes—TheBlack Dwarfand Blackwood—Scott and a Judgeship—Anecdote of Authorship ofWaverley.The year 1816, says Lockhart, 'has almost its only traces in the successive appearance of nine volumes, which attest the prodigal genius and hardly less astonishing industry' of Walter Scott. Among these were theAntiquaryandOld Mortality. The former appeared in the beginning of May, and about the same time occurred the death of the author's brother, Major John Scott, who had long been in weak health. Writing to Morritt on this occasion Scott says, 'It is a heavy consideration to have lost the last but one who was interested in our early domestic life, our habits of boyhood, and our first friends and connexions. It makes one look about and see how the scene has changed around him, and how he himself has been changed with it. My mother, now upwards of eighty, has now only one child left to her out of thirteen whom she had borne. She is a most excellent woman, possessed, even at her advanced age, of all the force of mind and sense of duty which have carried her through so many domestic griefs, as the successive deaths of eleven children, some of them come to men and women's estate, naturally infers. She is the principal subject of my attention at present, and is, I am glad to say, perfectly well in body and composed in mind.'In the same letter he speaks of theAntiquaryas being 'not so interesting' as its predecessors, but more fortunate than any of them in the sale, six thousand copies having gone off in a week. Meantime he was fast purchasing land to add to his estate. By this time it had grown from 150 acres to nearly a thousand. There were signs that might have warned him to be careful. At the time of James Ballantyne's fall he appears to have been owing over £3000 to Scott of personal debt. But Scott was sanguine by nature, and it was the interest of the Ballantynes to keep their businesses going. 'Therefore, in a word' (this is Lockhart's deliberate charge), 'John appears to have systematically disguised from Scott the extent to which the whole Ballantyne concern had been sustained by Constable—especially during his Hebridean tour of 1814, and his Continental one of 1815—and prompted and enforced the idea of trying other booksellers from time to time, instead of adhering to Constable, merely for the selfish purposes—first of facilitating the immediate discount of bills;—secondly, of further perplexing Scott's affairs, the entire disentanglement of which would have been, as he fancied, prejudicial to his own personal importance.'It was in this way that the Tales of my Landlord (that is, theBlack DwarfandOld Mortality) came to be published by Murray and Blackwood. The latter, alarmed by Gifford's disapprobation of theBlack Dwarf, proposed that if the author would recast the later chapters, he would gladly take upon himself the expense of cancelling the sheets. Scott's reply, in a letter to Ballantyne, was emphatic: 'Tell him and his coadjutor that I belong to the Black Hussars of Literature, who neither give nor receive quarter. I'll be cursed, but this is the most impudent proposal that ever was made.'An interesting fact in Scott's personal history which had previously been unknown even to Lockhart, was discovered by the latter when Scott's letters to the Duke of Buccleuch came into his hands after the death of the Duke. During the winter of 1816-1817, it appears, Scott made an attempt to exchange his Clerkship for a seat on the Bench of the Court of Exchequer. The Duke was naturally most anxious to second the proposal, but private reasons prevented him from exercising his influence at that juncture. This seems to have set the matter at rest. In later years, when such a step was suggested, Scott seems to have become convinced that the less conspicuous position was more fit and desirable for a literary man, and more especially a poet and novelist. At all events the Tory party lost the opportunity of making Walter Scott 'Lord Abbotsford.'After the publication of Tales of my Landlord by Murray, Scott, in conjunction with his friend Erskine, contributed to theQuarterlya general review of the Waverley Novels and a reply to Dr. M'Crie's strictures on the treatment of the Covenanters inOld Mortality. The criticisms were the work of Erskine, though Scott was severely censured after, as if he had been puffing his own works unfairly. The paper closed with an allusion to the report of Thomas Scott's being the author ofWaverley. 'A better joke,' says Lockhart, 'was never penned, and I think it includes a confession over which a misanthrope might have chuckled.' This is the conclusion: 'We intended here to conclude this long article, when a strong report reached us of certain Transatlantic confessions, which, if genuine (though of this we know nothing), assign a different author to these volumes than the party suspected by our Scottish correspondents. Yet a critic may be excused seizing upon the nearest suspicious person, on the principle happily expressed by Claverhouse in a letter to the Earl of Linlithgow. He had been, it seems, in search of a gifted weaver, who used to hold forth at conventicles: "I sent for the webster (weaver), they brought in hisbrotherfor him; though he, may be, cannot preach like his brother, I doubt not but he is as well-principled as he, wherefore I thought it would be no great fault to give him the trouble to go to jail with the rest."'At this point we shall cease to attempt any detailed account of the various novels and their publication. Our plan calls now only for a few striking scenes in the closing years of the life whose outward surroundings and personal environment in Edinburgh it is our main aim to illustrate. We may, however, conclude this chapter with the admirable summary by Lockhart of the qualities ofOld Mortality, a work which was the product of Scott's greatest intellectual effort, and which is usually, and justly, ranked withGuy Manneringas one of the best of the Scotch Novels. 'The story,' he says, 'is framed with a deeper skill than any of the preceding novels; the canvas is a broader one; the characters are contrasted and projected with a power and felicity which neither he nor any other master ever surpassed; and notwithstanding all that has been urged against him as a disparager of the Covenanters, it is to me very doubtful whether the inspiration of romantic chivalry ever prompted him to nobler emotions than he has lavished on the reanimation of their stern and solemn enthusiasm. The work has always appeared to me theMarmionof his novels.'CHAPTER LIII1817—Overwork and Illness—Kemble's 'Farewell Address'—The Kemble Dinner—Blackwood's Magazineand the Reign of Terror in Edinburgh.During the times of trouble with the Ballantyne affairs, Scott, as has been seen, taxed his strength to an extraordinary and dangerous extent. The effects were presently felt in that which was the permanently weak point of his physical constitution—the family tendency to paralysis. His first serious illness was in March 1817. From his letters to Morritt it appears that he had suffered all through the winter—while working as usual in Edinburgh—with cramps in the stomach. He had got temporary relief by means of drinking scalding water, but as the pains continued to recur more frequently he had been obliged reluctantly to have recourse to Dr. Baillie. 'But' (he says) 'before his answer arrived, on the 5th, I had a most violent attack, which broke up a small party at my house, and sent me to bed roaring like a bull-calf. All sorts of remedies were applied, as in the case of Gil Blas' pretended colic, but such was the pain of the real disorder, that it out-deviled the Doctor hollow. Even heated salt, which was applied in such a state that it burned my shirt to rags, I hardly felt when clapped to my stomach. At length the symptoms became inflammatory, and dangerously so, the seat being the diaphragm. They only gave way to very profuse bleeding and blistering, which, under higher assistance, saved my life. My recovery was slow and tedious from the state of exhaustion. I could neither stir for weakness and giddiness, nor read for dazzling in my eyes, nor listen for a whizzing sound in my ears, nor even think for lack of the power of arranging my ideas. So I had a comfortless time of it for about a week.' Lockhart adds that his friends in Edinburgh were in great anxiety about him all the spring, the attacks being more than once repeated. But he resumed work almost immediately, planning out, in intervals of pain, the drama calledThe Doom of Devorgoil. Now also he wrote the magnificent 'Farewell Address,' instinct with heart-felt pathos, with which his friend John Philip Kemble took his leave of the Edinburgh stage, on the evening of Saturday the 29th March 1817. The character in which Kemble had appeared was Macbeth, and he wore the dress of the character while he spoke the lines. 'Mr. Kemble' (says James Ballantyne) 'delivered these lines with exquisite beauty, and with an effect that was evidenced by the tears and sobs of many of the audience. His own emotions were very conspicuous. When his farewell was closed, he lingered long on the stage, as if unable to retire. The house again stood up, and cheered him with the waving of hats and long shouts of applause. At length he finally retired, and, in so far as regards Scotland, the curtain dropped upon his professional life for ever.''My last part is played, my knell is rung,When e'en your praise falls faltering from my tongue;And all that you can hear, or I can tell,Is Friends and patrons, hail, andFare you well!'A few days after, the great tragedian was entertained to dinner by his Edinburgh admirers. There was a company of about seventy notable persons—among them Lockhart, who says, 'I was never present at any public dinner in all its circumstances more impressive.' Jeffrey was chairman, and the croupiers were Walter Scott and John Wilson. From theLifeof Jeffrey we extract a curious anecdote of this interesting scene. That evening Jeffrey 'did what he never did before or since. He stuck a speech. He had to make the address and present a snuff-box to Kemble. He began very promisingly, but got confused, and amazed both himself and everybody else, by actually sitting down and leaving the speech unfinished; and, until reminded of that part of his duty, not even thrusting the box into the hand of the intended receiver. He afterwards told me the reason of this. He had not premeditated the scene, and thought he had nothing to do, except in the name of the company to give the box. But as soon as he rose to do this, Kemble, who was beside him, rose also, and with most formidable dignity. This forced Jeffrey to look up to his man; when he found himself annihilated by the tall tragic god; who sank him to the earth at every compliment, by obeisances of overwhelming grace and stateliness.' The incident must have been awkward for Kemble, but it was a genuine and involuntary tribute to the majestic bearing of the great actor.Shortly after this, in April 1817, there occurred an event which greatly stirred the peaceful waters of Edinburgh social and literary life, and with which Scott's future son-in-law and biographer, John Gibson Lockhart, was to be very prominently associated. This was the founding of theEdinburgh Monthly Magazine. The publisher was John Blackwood. Wishing to develop the magazine on lines of his own, this far-seeing and able gentleman, first shaking himself clear from the two editorial personages who were hampering his energies, started the periodical afresh at the seventh number under the title ofBlackwood's Edinburgh Magazine. The famous No. VII. came like a thunderbolt. All the world wondered. From what sources had Blackwood evoked the wit, the tremendous energy, the boundless audacity of personal attack which at once shocked and delighted the public mind? The Whigs were both tortured and alarmed. The days of their sole literary domination were seen straightway to be over. For them especially a Reign of Terror had begun. They were now to be subjected to the lash of an incomparable, though often excessive, power of ridicule: a form of punishment which always hurts most sorely those to whom the saving grace of humour has been denied. NecessarilyBlackwood's Magazinewas a political engine, the organ of high Toryism. As such, it was liable to the sneer of Cockburn (a sneer which tells with equal justness against all theoretical defenders of current politics): 'In this department it has adhered with respectable constancy to all the follies it was meant to defend. It is a great depository of exploded principles; and indeed it will soon be valuable as a museum of old errors.' But every device of mystification, an example set by Scott, was employed to keep the secret of who were really 'Blackwood's young Tory wags,' and this was further secured by the entirely unsuspected fact, that the editor was actually Blackwood himself. The marvellous thing, now that the facts are known, is the enormous share performed by the two chiefs, Lockhart and Wilson. In their buoyant eagerness to break up the monopoly of Whig literary and political influence, they doubtless went too far, and sometimes knew it. Later on, these early defects were acknowledged and analysed, inPeter's Letters, by the authors themselves. Even they, it may be, hardly realised how much pain they had given, but the almost solemn words of Lord Cockburn indicate very clearly how intense it must have been. 'Posterity,' he says, 'can never be made to feel the surprise and just offence with which, till we were hardened to it, this work was received. The minute circumstances which impart freshness to slander soon evaporate; and the arrows that fester in living reputations and in beating hearts are pointless, or invisible to the eyes of those who search for them afterwards as curiosities.' It was, in fact, the work of young and inexperienced men brimful of genius and spirit, but untaught to discern the dangers in the use of the weapons with which they played.CHAPTER LIVPersonal Anecdotes of Scott—Washington Irving—The Minister's Daughter—J. G. Lockhart—His Introduction to Scott—Annual Register—39 Castle Street—Scott's 'Den'—Animal Favourites.In the autumn of 1817 Washington Irving, with whoseHistory of New Yorkby Knickerbocker Scott had been greatly charmed, paid a visit to Abbotsford, and received a hearty welcome. One of the anecdotes told by Irving of this visit may be given here, as illustrating the beautiful courtesy and fine sympathetic feeling with which it was Scott's nature to treat sterling worth and generosity of mind in whatever rank he discovered it. Irving tells how William Laidlaw and his wife came to dinner one day, accompanied by a lady friend. He observed with some curiosity that this by no means extraordinary person, who was middle-aged and only remarkable for her intellectual qualities, was treated by their host with particular attention and courtesy. The occasion was in fact a specially pleasant one, and the company were made to feel that they were cherished guests. On their leaving, Scott, to Irving's great delight, launched into hearty praise of the lady visitor. The daughter of a Scottish minister, who died in debt, she had been left an orphan and destitute. She had at once faced the situation with a brave heart, and though her education was not great, she set up a school for young children, which soon proved in its way a success. But she made her own concerns a secondary object. By submitting to all sorts of privation, she managed to pay off all her father's debts, determined that no slighting word or evil feeling might humble his memory. And this was not all. To the martyr's self-sacrifice she added a divine benevolence. To some who once had been kind to her father and were now fallen on evil days, she did all the service she could by teaching their little ones without reward or fee. Happily her memory is green in the eulogy of the great neighbour to whom she was a kindred spirit: 'She's a fine old Scotch girl, and I delight in her more than in many a fine lady I have known, and I have known many of the finest.'It was in the following year, in May 1818, that John Gibson Lockhart, then a young barrister with pronounced literary leanings, was first introduced to Scott. It was the moment when, as the great biographer himself has eloquently put it, 'Scott's position was, take it for all in all, what no other man had ever won for himself by the pen alone. His works were the daily food, not only of his countrymen, but of all educated Europe. His society was courted by whatever England could show of eminence. Station, power, wealth, beauty, and genius, strove with each other in every demonstration of respect and worship, and—a few political fanatics and envious poetasters apart—wherever he appeared in town or country, whoever had Scotch blood in him, "gentle or simple," felt it move more rapidly through his veins when he was in the presence of Scott.' But in the midst of this blaze of glory, and while he was dreaming dreams of fortune and family pride, what was it that struck the most keen-eyed of critics when he first saw his hero? Only the plain easy modesty, the kindness of heart whichpervadedevery word, tone, and gesture, the simple qualities which made him 'loved more and more' by his earliest friends. It was at the house of Mr. Home Drummond, a grandson of Lord Kames, that the meeting took place. Like every other literary aspirant, Lockhart was astonished and gratified by the cordiality and kindly appreciation of the elder writer. 'When the ladies' (he says) 'retired from the dinner-table, I happened to sit next him; and he, having heard that I had lately returned from a tour in Germany, made that country and its recent literature the subject of some conversation. In the course of it, I told him that when, on reaching the inn at Weimar, I asked the waiter whether Goethe was then in the town, the man stared as if he had not heard the name before; and that, on my repeating the question, addingGoethe der grosse Dichter, he shook his head as doubtfully as before—until the landlord solved our difficulties, by suggesting that perhaps the traveller might mean "Herr Geheimer-Rath(Privy Councillor)von Goethe."—Scott seemed amused with this and said, "I hope you will come one of these days and see me at Abbotsford; and when you reach Selkirk or Melrose, be sure you ask even the landlady for nobody butthe Sheriff." I mentioned how much any one must be struck with the majestic beauty of Goethe's countenance—the noblest certainly by far that I have ever yet seen—"Well," said he, "the grandest demi-god I ever saw was Dr. Carlyle, minister of Musselburgh, commonly calledJupiter Carlyle, from having sat more than once for the king of gods and men to Gavin Hamilton—and a shrewd, clever old carle was he, no doubt, but no more a poet than his precentor. As for poets, I have seen, I believe, all the best of our own time and country—and though Burns had the most glorious eyes imaginable, I never thought any of them would come up to an artist's notion of the character, except Byron."'Soon after this Lockhart was, on Scott's recommendation, invited by the Ballantynes to take Scott's place in working up the historical part of theirAnnual Register. Thus they met pretty frequently during the ensuing summer session, a circumstance to which we owe Lockhart's very complete and first-hand description of Scott's working 'den' at 39 Castle Street and of his social life at this period. The den was a small square back-room behind the dining parlour. It looked out upon a dull back-yard with a small square of turf. The walls of the room were lined with books, mostly stately folios and quartos beautifully kept, as befitted a lover of books. There was one massive table, on which was his own desk, and one opposite for an occasional amanuensis. On the top lay his law papers, while his MSS., letters, and proof-sheets were under his hand on the desk below. Before the desk stood his large elbow-chair, and there were only two other chairs in the room. Beside the window was a pile of green tin boxes, on the top of which was a fox's tail mounted on a handle of old silver and used for dusting the top of a book as occasion required. He had a ladder for scaling the high shelves, which is described as 'low, broad, well carpeted, and strongly guarded with oaken rails.' His living companions in his den were usually a venerable tom-cat called Hinse, which had a liking for the top of the ladder, and the noble stag-hound Maida, whose lair was on the hearth-rug. 'I venture to say' (Lockhart remarks) 'that Scott was never five minutes in any room before the little pets of the family, whether dumb or lisping, had found out his kindness for all their generation.'In conversation among his friends, Scott was always natural, sensible, and good-humoured. His ideal society, as we have seen, was the simple but high-toned friendliness, with courtly attention to old manners and customs of the social board—the ways of the old-fashioned generation before 1800, when Edinburgh society still took its tone from the Scottish aristocracy and gentry. After this period Edinburgh table-talk and manners were led by the lawyers. Men shone in society by contests of dialectics, brilliant disquisitions, 'such as might be transferred without alteration to the pages of a critical review.' Scott was of another world from this. He admired the dexterity and skill displayed, but he was not tempted to take part. It lacked the touch of nature which would have made him acknowledge kin. So everybody else was satisfied, and Scott was not displeased. The great poet, the writer of conversations which had heightened the gaiety of millions, was perfectly content to be considered inferior as a table-companion to 'this or that master of luminous dissertation or quick rejoinder, who now sleeps as forgotten as his grandmother.' To appreciate, it is necessary to know something and to sympathise. The persons who called Scott's conversation 'common-place' were practically comparing the Waverley Novels to Dugald Stewart's lectures, and would have denounced Shakespeare for making up hisHamletout of popular quotations. It was 'ignorance, madam, pure ignorance,' without the wit to acknowledge, and in many cases political prejudice was also present. To one of the latter Lockhart heard Lord Cockburn nobly reply: 'I have the misfortune to think differently from you; in my humble opinion, Walter Scott'ssenseis a still more wonderful thing than hisgenius.' Nothing could be better: a noble and excellent saying. And to similar effect in hisMemorialshe testifies that scarcely even in his novels was Scott more striking or delightful than in society; where his halting limb, the bur in the throat, the heavy cheeks, the high Goldsmith-forehead, the unkempt locks, and general plainness of appearance, with the Scotch accent and stories and sayings, all graced by gaiety, simplicity, and kindness, made a combination most worthy of being enjoyed.CHAPTER LVScotland Edinburgh Society—Lockhart's Opinion—Scott's Drives in Edinburgh—Love of Antiquities—The Sunday Dinners at 39 Castle Street—The Maclean Clephanes—Erskine, Clerk, C. K. Sharpe, Sir A. Boswell, W. Allan,—Favourite Dishes.Ignorant prejudice gradually disappeared. The charm of Scott's conversation was found to be as great, in fact the same, as that of his writings. Mingling with and wishing to emulate London society, Edinburgh great folks came to understand that social intercourse ought to aim at enjoyment and relaxation, not at the display of alleged wit and amateur disquisitions on speculative themes. Then they discovered that Scott's easy, natural humour, his ever-ready and picturesque descriptions, his quaint old-world sayings and diverting sketches and anecdotes, nay, his very prejudices, always honest and so very lovable when understood to their foundation, were unique treasures even from the narrowest point of view. This was what all, long before 1818, recognised whose opinion was worth considering. But Lockhart, who had the best means of knowing, as being himself 'one of them,' says that even then the old theory, that Scott's conversation was 'commonplace,' lingered on in the general opinion of the city, especially among the smart praters of theOuter House. Of course it was the cue of these praters to differ from their elders, and few of them, after all, had perhaps enjoyed what they made a boast of affecting to depreciate. Lockhart, who was certainly in the Whig sense the strongestintellectthat ever adorned Edinburgh, both enjoyed and appreciated. And fortunately for usminores, he has told what he saw and rejoiced in. He says: 'It was impossible to listen to Scott's oral narrations, whether gay or serious, or to the felicitous fun with which he parried absurdities of all sorts, without discovering better qualities in his talk thanwit—and of a higher order; I mean especially a power ofvivid painting—the true and primary sense of what is calledImagination. He was like Jacques—though not a "Melancholy Jacques"; and "moralised" a common topic into a "thousand similitudes." Shakespeare and the banished Duke would have found him "full of matter." He disliked mere disquisitions in Edinburgh, and preparedimpromptusin London; and puzzled the promoters of such things sometimes by placid silence, sometimes by broad merriment. To such men he seemedcommon-place—not so to the most dexterous masters in what was to some of them almost a science; not so to Rose, Hallam, Moore, or Rogers,—to Ellis, Mackintosh, Croker, or Canning.'When in Edinburgh, Scott's only formal outing was an afternoon drive in an open carriage, sometimes to Blackford Hill, or Ravelston, and so home by Corstorphine, sometimes to Portobello, keeping as close as possible to the sea. An old man who died last year (1905) used to tell how, when he was a boy, he remembered Scott alighting and coming some distance across a field to speak a few kind words to him and ask after his parents, in whom he took an interest. When he went home, his mother told him about the great man and bade her son remember that day, for if he lived to be an old man, he would be proud to talk of it to his children's children. As he drove through the city, it was Scott's greatest enjoyment to gaze and muse upon its natural beauties, and especially its remaining antiquities. He would often make a long circuit in order, as Lockhart observed, 'to spend a few minutes on the vacant esplanade of Holyrood, or under the darkest shadows of the Castle rock, where it overhangs the Grassmarket, and the huge slab that still marks where the gibbet of Porteous and the Covenanters had its station. His coachman knew him too well to move at a Jehu's pace amidst such scenes as these. No funeral hearse crept more leisurely than did his landau up the Canongate or the Cowgate; and not a queer tottering gable but recalled to him some long-buried memory of splendour or bloodshed, which, by a few words, he set before the hearer in the reality of life. His image is so associated in my mind with the antiquities of his native place, that I cannot now revisit them without feeling as if I were treading on his gravestone.'But of all pleasant memories of the Master well-beloved, the most delightful to conjure up is that of the good Clerk as host at the Sunday 'dinner without the silver dishes,' as he was wont to call it. It was always a gathering of dear and long-cherished friends. All were delighted to meet, and all were prepared to be happy. Gladdest of all was their host, who came into the room 'rubbing his hands, his face bright and gleesome, like a boy arriving at home for the holidays, his Peppers and Mustards gambolling about his heels, and even the stately Maida grinning and wagging his tail in sympathy.' Most of the intimates who came to these parties have already been mentioned. There was Mrs. Maclean Clephane, with whom Scott would playfully dispute on the subject of Ossian. Her daughters would accompany her, to delight all, especially Scott, with the poetry and music of their native isles. They had made him their guardian by their own choice, and were loved for their own sakes. The eldest was that Lady Crompton with whom, as he tells in theJournal, he travelled to Glasgow in September 1827, and had 'as pleasant a journey as the kindness, wit, and accomplishments of my companion could make it.' When they reached Glasgow, they met, at the Buck's Head, Mrs. Maclean Clephane and her two daughters. He mentions that after dinner the ladies sang, 'particularly Aunt Jane, who has more taste and talent than half the people going with great reputations on their backs.' Then there were the Skenes, the Macdonald Buchanans, and all theniecesandnephewsof the Clerks' table alliance. 'The well-beloved Erskine,' says Lockhart, 'was seldom absent; and very often Terry or James Ballantyne came with him—sometimes, though less frequently, Constable. To say nothing of such old cronies as Clerk, Thomson, and Kirkpatrick Sharpe.' It was of his boyhood's friend and mentor, Clerk, that Scott said he feared he would leave the world little more than the report of his fame. It was his opinion, as well as that of other competent judges, that he had never met a man of greater powers than Clerk. Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe was also regarded by Scott very highly, and is sketched in a lively page in theJournal, 1825. His effeminacy of voice, his clever and fanciful drawings—which he was too aristocratic to use for increasing his small income—his odd curiosity for scandal centuries old, made Sharpe a very remarkable figure. 'My idea is' (says Scott) 'that C. K. S. with his oddities, tastes, satire, and high aristocratic feelings, resembles Horace Walpole—perhaps in his person also, in a general way.'Lockhart mentions also Sir Alexander Boswell, author of the humorous song,Jeannie dang the Weaver, and a great bibliomaniac, Sir Alexander Don of Newton, 'the model of a cavalier,' and William Allan, R.A., whom Scott calls a very agreeable, simple-mannered, and pleasant man. Allan became Sir William, President of the Royal Scottish Academy from 1838 to 1850. In July 1826 Scott mentions his having been to see Allan's picture of 'the Landing of Queen Mary.' Three or four of these friends, with Scott and his family, took their places every Sunday at the 'plain dinner' in No. 39 Castle Street.Scott kept a bounteously loaded table. He was himself a hearty eater, preferring plain substantial fare. He was not a gourmand, still less a glutton. His one good meal was breakfast. At dinner his appetite was neither keen nor nice. 'The only dishes he was at all fond of were the old-fashioned ones to which he had been accustomed in the days of Saunders Fairford.' Readers of the Novels have heard of them all, and few will forget the conclusion of theFortunes of Nigel: 'My lords and lieges, let us all to our dinner, for thecock-a-leekieis cooling.'

The New Town of Edinburgh, as seen by Scott and his contemporaries, was simply a product of the mason. The houses were plain three-story buildings, without ornament and without variety. They stood end-on in long barrack-like blocks. 'Our jealousy of variety,' says Cockburn, 'and our association of magnificence with sameness, was really curious. If a builder ever attempted (which, however, to do them justice, they very seldom did) to deviate so far from the established paltriness as to carry up the front wall so as to hide the projecting slates, or to break the roof by a Flemish storm window, or to turn his gable to the street, there was an immediate outcry; and if the law allowed our burgh Edile, the Dean of Guild, to interfere, he was sure to do so.' Mere convenience was the only guiding principle, and it was the same with the famous 'Plan' for laying out the streets. Instead of taking a hint from the strikingly picturesque irregularity of the romantic 'Old Town,' the projectors studiously endeavoured to make everything as unlike it as possible. The 'Plan' laid down the streets in long straight lines, divided to an inch, and all to the same number of inches, by intersecting straight lines at right angles.

Well might a few men of taste hold up protesting hands and exclaim, What a site did nature give us for our New Town! Yet what insignificance in its Plan! What poverty in all its details! But the most of the citizens were quite contented with the Plan and the buildings. They thought the idea of three main streets intersected by six cross streets at right angles and at regular distances, a perfect inspiration of genius. They talked of its beauty and elegance, and fondly believed that the New Town had few equals in Europe. Certainly in one point the contrast with the Old Town was in favour of the New. The streets were made spacious and broad, giving the inestimable boon of free air. Along with the New Town there gradually grew another monument, gigantic in every sense, of the taste of Edinburgh citizens—'the Mound,' as it is still called, a monument which justifies the city's love and pride in being at least unique. It took fifty years to collect, it is eight hundred feet long, its height at the north end is sixty feet, and at the south end one hundred. Like every other great work, the Mound has had its detractors. Lord Cockburn said of it, 'The creation of that abominable incumbrance, the "Earthen Mound," by which the valley it abridges and deforms was sacrificed for a deposit of rubbish, was not only permitted without a murmur to be slowly raised, but throughout all its progress was applauded as a noble accumulation.' It was originally suggested by a Lawnmarket shopkeeper. Even at the present day there are some who have their doubts about its beauty and elegance, but they are easily silenced by recalling its vastness and its original cheapness. The Mound, in fact, is here to stay.

After the peace, when Europe was immediately covered with travellers, it became known to some Edinburgh natives that there were better things in city architecture than the 'regular, elegant, and commodious' houses of New Edinburgh. 'Not one of them, whether from taste, or conceit, or mere chattering—but it all did good—failed to contrast the littleness of almost all that the people of Edinburgh had yet done, with the general picturesque grandeur and the unrivalled sites of their city. It was about this time that the foolish phrase, "The Modern Athens," began to be applied to the capital of Scotland; a sarcasm, or a piece of affected flattery, when used in a moral sense; but just enough if meant only as a comparison of the physical features of the two places.'

The existence of a New Town soon forced on the opening up of the city by adequate routes of access. The narrow, steep, and crooked 'wynds' of the Old Town had been constructed in the days when to keep enemies out was the first, indeed the only consideration. Now it became a primary necessity to provide broad, open, and convenient approaches from all sides. The citizens soon enjoyed the privilege of issuing by wide and pleasant highways, conducting to the open fields. And fortunately the buildings now erected beside these spacious approaches were not dominated by the 'Plan.' Cockburn himself considered the buildings 'very respectable; the owners being always tempted to allure the spreading population by laying out their land attractively. Hence Newington, Leith Walk, the grounds of Inverleith, the road to Corstorphine, and to Queensferry, and indeed all the modern approaches, which lead in every direction through most comfortable suburbs.'

It is clear from Lord Cockburn's invaluable testimony that the idea of the more free and daring attempts in architecture, which have now given the New Town a character so different from its 'planned' uniformity and elegance, originated immediately after the peace. 'The influence of these circumstances can only be appreciated by those who knew Edinburgh during the war. It is they alone who can see the beauty of the bravery which the Queen of the North has since been putting on. There were more schemes, and pamphlets, and discussions, and anxiety about the improvement of our edifices and prospects within ten years after the war ceased, than throughout the whole of the preceding one hundred and fifty years.'

Suburban Edinburgh of to-day rejoices in a profusion of trees. Had the same taste been predominant at this period, how different even the centre of the city might have been. It is tantalising to imagine the pictures left us of what existed in those bygone days. 'There was no Scotch city more strikingly graced by individual trees and by groups of them than Edinburgh, since I knew it, used to be. How well the ridge of the Old Town was set off by a bank of elms that ran along the front of James' Court, and stretched eastward over the ground now partly occupied by the Bank of Scotland. Some very respectable trees might have been spared to grace the Episcopal Chapel of St. Paul in York Place. There was one large tree near its east end which was so well placed that some people conjectured it was on its account that the Chapel was set down there. I was at a consultation in John Clerk's house, hard by, when that tree was cut. On hearing that it was actually down we ran out, and well did John curse the Huns. The old aristocratic gardens of the Canongate were crowded with trees, and with good ones. There were several on the Calton Hill; seven, not ill-grown, on its very summit. And all Leith Walk and Lauriston, including the ground round Heriot's Hospital, was fully set with wood. A group was felled about the year 1826 which stood to the west of St. John's Chapel, on the opposite side of the Lothian Road, and formed a beautiful termination of all the streets which join near that point. Moray Place, in the same way, might have been richly decorated with old and respectable trees. But they were all murdered.... I tried to save a very picturesque group, some of which waved over the wall at the west end of the jail on the Calton Hill. I succeeded with two trees; but in about four years they also disappeared. The sad truth is that the extinction of foliage, and the unbroken display of their bright freestone, is of itself a first object with both our masons and their employers. The wooded gardens that we have recently acquired are not inconsistent with this statement. There was no competition between them and building. It is our horror of the direct combination of trees with masonry, and our incapacity to effect it, that I complain of. No apology is thought necessary for murdering a tree; many for preserving it.'

CHAPTER LI

The 'Jury Court'—Chief-Commissioner Adam—His Work and Success—Friendship with Scott—Character of Adam by Scott—The Blairadam Club—Anecdotes—Death of Lord Adam.

Trial by jury in civil cases was introduced into Scotland by an enactment of the year 1815. The first case was tried on 22nd January 1816. The change thus inaugurated was considered by reformers 'one of the most important events in the progress of our law.' Though meeting with strong opposition, headed by the old judges, the introduction of the new system was managed successfully. It implied the arrangement of a separate court, and the appointment of a special presiding judge trained to English practice. The Lord Chief-Commissioner was the Right Hon. William Adam, of Blairadam, and he was assisted by two other judges, Lords Pitmilly and Meadowbank. Adam was then sixty-five years of age. Cockburn says that he was handicapped by extravagant expectations of what he was to do. He describes him as 'the person who had first fought Fox, and then been his friend; who had spoken in debate with Pitt; managed the affairs of Royal Dukes; been the standing counsel of such clients as the East India Company and the Bank of England, and in great practice in Parliamentary Committees.' His appearance was that of a farming gentleman. He had a clear distinct voice, and an admirable manner, but his great defect is said to have been 'obscurity of judicial speech.' Lord Glenlee, listening for a long time, without getting any definite idea, to his well-sounding sentences full of confusion, made the epigram, 'He speaks as if he were an Act of Parliament.'

We have the testimony of Lord Cockburn to the success of his work. 'No other man could have done his work. He had to guide a vessel over shoals and among rocks. This was his special duty, and he did it admirably. He protected his court from prejudices which, if not subdued by his patience and dexterity, would have crushed it any week. So far as we are to retain civil trial by jury in this country, we shall owe it to him personally. When in 1830 the Jury Court ceased to exist as a separate court his vocation was at an end; and he retired with the respect and the affection of the whole legal profession and of the public.'

Such was the task of the man with whom Scott was now to be connected during the rest of his life in a constant interchange of hospitality, and whom he so frequently mentions in hisJournalwith epithets of esteem and respect. Their acquaintance practically dated from Adam's appointment, but soon grew into the closest friendship. The account of their connection in theJournal(January 1826) must be quoted for the vivid, almost startling light it throws on Scott's own peculiarities.

'I have taken kindly to him as one of the most pleasant, kind-hearted, benevolent, and pleasing men I have ever known. It is high treason among the Tories to express regard for him, or respect for the Jury Court in which he presides. I was against that experiment as much as any one. But it is an experiment, and the establishment (which the fools will not perceive) is the only thing which I see likely to give some prospects of ambition to our Bar. As for the Chief-Commissioner, I dare say he jobs, as all other people of consequence do, in elections, and so forth. But he is the personal friend of the King, and the decided enemy of whatever strikes at the constitutional rights of the monarch. Besides, I love him for the various changes which he has endured through life, and which have been so great as to make him entitled to be regarded in one point of view as the most fortunate—in the other, the most unfortunate—man in the world. He has gained and lost two fortunes by the same good luck, and the same rash confidence, which raised, and now threatens, mypeculium. And his quiet, honourable, and generous submission under circumstances more painful than mine,—for the loss of world's wealth was to him aggravated by the death of his youngest and darling son in the West Indies—furnished me at the time and now with a noble example. So the Tories and Whigs may go be d—d together, as names that have disturbed old Scotland, and torn asunder the most kindly feelings since the first day they were invented.... I cannot permit that strife to "mix its waters with my daily meal," those waters of bitterness which poison all mutual love and confidence betwixt the well-disposed on either side.'

Adam was fond of society, in which 'nothing could exceed his delightfulness.' The Blairadam Club was for many years (from 1818 onwards) an institution. It was an annual gathering at midsummer of a few bosom friends, among them Scott, William Clerk, and Sir Adam Ferguson. The friends spent a day or two together, and generally made it a gay and happy occasion. 'We hire a light coach-and-four, and scour the country in every direction in quest of objects of curiosity.' The last meeting attended by Scott was in 1830, when he says: 'Our meeting was cordial, but our numbers diminished. Will Clerk has a bad cold, Thomas Thomson is detained, but the Chief-Commissioner, Admiral Adam (son of the host), Sir Adam, John Thomson and I, make an excellent concert. The day was execrable (wet). But Sir Adam was in high fooling, and we had an amazing deal of laughing.' It is pathetic, in the midst of this, to see how he fretted to be at home, in order to be at work again. In theJournalwe come across some remarks or anecdotes of Adam's, of which one or two may be given. 'I came home with Lord Chief-Commissioner Adam. He told me a dictum of old Sir Gilbert Elliot, speaking of his uncles. "No chance of opulence," he said, "is worth the risk of a competence." It was not the thought of a great man, but perhaps that of a wise one.'

Again, 'Dined with Chief-Commissioner,—Admiral Adam, W. Clerk, Thomson and I. The excellent old man was cheerful at intervals—at times sad, as was natural. A good blunder he told us, occurred in the Annandale case, which was a question partly of domicile. It was proved that leaving Lochwood, the Earl had given up hiskainandcarriages; this an English counsel contended was the best of all possible proofs that the noble Earl designed an absolute change of residence, since he laid aside hiswalking-stickand hiscoach.'[1]

[1]Kainin Scots Law means 'payment in kind': carriages, 'services in driving with horse and cart.'

Lockhart has recorded that 'this most amiable and venerable gentleman, my dear and kind friend, died at Edinburgh, on the 17th February 1839, in the eighty-ninth year of his age. He retained his strong mental faculties in their perfect vigour to the last days of his long life, and with them all the warmth of social feelings which had endeared him to all who were so happy as to have any opportunity of knowing him.'

CHAPTER LII

1816—TheAntiquary—Death of Major John Scott—The Aged Mother—Buying Land—The Ballantynes—TheBlack Dwarfand Blackwood—Scott and a Judgeship—Anecdote of Authorship ofWaverley.

The year 1816, says Lockhart, 'has almost its only traces in the successive appearance of nine volumes, which attest the prodigal genius and hardly less astonishing industry' of Walter Scott. Among these were theAntiquaryandOld Mortality. The former appeared in the beginning of May, and about the same time occurred the death of the author's brother, Major John Scott, who had long been in weak health. Writing to Morritt on this occasion Scott says, 'It is a heavy consideration to have lost the last but one who was interested in our early domestic life, our habits of boyhood, and our first friends and connexions. It makes one look about and see how the scene has changed around him, and how he himself has been changed with it. My mother, now upwards of eighty, has now only one child left to her out of thirteen whom she had borne. She is a most excellent woman, possessed, even at her advanced age, of all the force of mind and sense of duty which have carried her through so many domestic griefs, as the successive deaths of eleven children, some of them come to men and women's estate, naturally infers. She is the principal subject of my attention at present, and is, I am glad to say, perfectly well in body and composed in mind.'

In the same letter he speaks of theAntiquaryas being 'not so interesting' as its predecessors, but more fortunate than any of them in the sale, six thousand copies having gone off in a week. Meantime he was fast purchasing land to add to his estate. By this time it had grown from 150 acres to nearly a thousand. There were signs that might have warned him to be careful. At the time of James Ballantyne's fall he appears to have been owing over £3000 to Scott of personal debt. But Scott was sanguine by nature, and it was the interest of the Ballantynes to keep their businesses going. 'Therefore, in a word' (this is Lockhart's deliberate charge), 'John appears to have systematically disguised from Scott the extent to which the whole Ballantyne concern had been sustained by Constable—especially during his Hebridean tour of 1814, and his Continental one of 1815—and prompted and enforced the idea of trying other booksellers from time to time, instead of adhering to Constable, merely for the selfish purposes—first of facilitating the immediate discount of bills;—secondly, of further perplexing Scott's affairs, the entire disentanglement of which would have been, as he fancied, prejudicial to his own personal importance.'

It was in this way that the Tales of my Landlord (that is, theBlack DwarfandOld Mortality) came to be published by Murray and Blackwood. The latter, alarmed by Gifford's disapprobation of theBlack Dwarf, proposed that if the author would recast the later chapters, he would gladly take upon himself the expense of cancelling the sheets. Scott's reply, in a letter to Ballantyne, was emphatic: 'Tell him and his coadjutor that I belong to the Black Hussars of Literature, who neither give nor receive quarter. I'll be cursed, but this is the most impudent proposal that ever was made.'

An interesting fact in Scott's personal history which had previously been unknown even to Lockhart, was discovered by the latter when Scott's letters to the Duke of Buccleuch came into his hands after the death of the Duke. During the winter of 1816-1817, it appears, Scott made an attempt to exchange his Clerkship for a seat on the Bench of the Court of Exchequer. The Duke was naturally most anxious to second the proposal, but private reasons prevented him from exercising his influence at that juncture. This seems to have set the matter at rest. In later years, when such a step was suggested, Scott seems to have become convinced that the less conspicuous position was more fit and desirable for a literary man, and more especially a poet and novelist. At all events the Tory party lost the opportunity of making Walter Scott 'Lord Abbotsford.'

After the publication of Tales of my Landlord by Murray, Scott, in conjunction with his friend Erskine, contributed to theQuarterlya general review of the Waverley Novels and a reply to Dr. M'Crie's strictures on the treatment of the Covenanters inOld Mortality. The criticisms were the work of Erskine, though Scott was severely censured after, as if he had been puffing his own works unfairly. The paper closed with an allusion to the report of Thomas Scott's being the author ofWaverley. 'A better joke,' says Lockhart, 'was never penned, and I think it includes a confession over which a misanthrope might have chuckled.' This is the conclusion: 'We intended here to conclude this long article, when a strong report reached us of certain Transatlantic confessions, which, if genuine (though of this we know nothing), assign a different author to these volumes than the party suspected by our Scottish correspondents. Yet a critic may be excused seizing upon the nearest suspicious person, on the principle happily expressed by Claverhouse in a letter to the Earl of Linlithgow. He had been, it seems, in search of a gifted weaver, who used to hold forth at conventicles: "I sent for the webster (weaver), they brought in hisbrotherfor him; though he, may be, cannot preach like his brother, I doubt not but he is as well-principled as he, wherefore I thought it would be no great fault to give him the trouble to go to jail with the rest."'

At this point we shall cease to attempt any detailed account of the various novels and their publication. Our plan calls now only for a few striking scenes in the closing years of the life whose outward surroundings and personal environment in Edinburgh it is our main aim to illustrate. We may, however, conclude this chapter with the admirable summary by Lockhart of the qualities ofOld Mortality, a work which was the product of Scott's greatest intellectual effort, and which is usually, and justly, ranked withGuy Manneringas one of the best of the Scotch Novels. 'The story,' he says, 'is framed with a deeper skill than any of the preceding novels; the canvas is a broader one; the characters are contrasted and projected with a power and felicity which neither he nor any other master ever surpassed; and notwithstanding all that has been urged against him as a disparager of the Covenanters, it is to me very doubtful whether the inspiration of romantic chivalry ever prompted him to nobler emotions than he has lavished on the reanimation of their stern and solemn enthusiasm. The work has always appeared to me theMarmionof his novels.'

CHAPTER LIII

1817—Overwork and Illness—Kemble's 'Farewell Address'—The Kemble Dinner—Blackwood's Magazineand the Reign of Terror in Edinburgh.

During the times of trouble with the Ballantyne affairs, Scott, as has been seen, taxed his strength to an extraordinary and dangerous extent. The effects were presently felt in that which was the permanently weak point of his physical constitution—the family tendency to paralysis. His first serious illness was in March 1817. From his letters to Morritt it appears that he had suffered all through the winter—while working as usual in Edinburgh—with cramps in the stomach. He had got temporary relief by means of drinking scalding water, but as the pains continued to recur more frequently he had been obliged reluctantly to have recourse to Dr. Baillie. 'But' (he says) 'before his answer arrived, on the 5th, I had a most violent attack, which broke up a small party at my house, and sent me to bed roaring like a bull-calf. All sorts of remedies were applied, as in the case of Gil Blas' pretended colic, but such was the pain of the real disorder, that it out-deviled the Doctor hollow. Even heated salt, which was applied in such a state that it burned my shirt to rags, I hardly felt when clapped to my stomach. At length the symptoms became inflammatory, and dangerously so, the seat being the diaphragm. They only gave way to very profuse bleeding and blistering, which, under higher assistance, saved my life. My recovery was slow and tedious from the state of exhaustion. I could neither stir for weakness and giddiness, nor read for dazzling in my eyes, nor listen for a whizzing sound in my ears, nor even think for lack of the power of arranging my ideas. So I had a comfortless time of it for about a week.' Lockhart adds that his friends in Edinburgh were in great anxiety about him all the spring, the attacks being more than once repeated. But he resumed work almost immediately, planning out, in intervals of pain, the drama calledThe Doom of Devorgoil. Now also he wrote the magnificent 'Farewell Address,' instinct with heart-felt pathos, with which his friend John Philip Kemble took his leave of the Edinburgh stage, on the evening of Saturday the 29th March 1817. The character in which Kemble had appeared was Macbeth, and he wore the dress of the character while he spoke the lines. 'Mr. Kemble' (says James Ballantyne) 'delivered these lines with exquisite beauty, and with an effect that was evidenced by the tears and sobs of many of the audience. His own emotions were very conspicuous. When his farewell was closed, he lingered long on the stage, as if unable to retire. The house again stood up, and cheered him with the waving of hats and long shouts of applause. At length he finally retired, and, in so far as regards Scotland, the curtain dropped upon his professional life for ever.'

'My last part is played, my knell is rung,When e'en your praise falls faltering from my tongue;And all that you can hear, or I can tell,Is Friends and patrons, hail, andFare you well!'

'My last part is played, my knell is rung,When e'en your praise falls faltering from my tongue;And all that you can hear, or I can tell,Is Friends and patrons, hail, andFare you well!'

'My last part is played, my knell is rung,

When e'en your praise falls faltering from my tongue;

And all that you can hear, or I can tell,

Is Friends and patrons, hail, andFare you well!'

A few days after, the great tragedian was entertained to dinner by his Edinburgh admirers. There was a company of about seventy notable persons—among them Lockhart, who says, 'I was never present at any public dinner in all its circumstances more impressive.' Jeffrey was chairman, and the croupiers were Walter Scott and John Wilson. From theLifeof Jeffrey we extract a curious anecdote of this interesting scene. That evening Jeffrey 'did what he never did before or since. He stuck a speech. He had to make the address and present a snuff-box to Kemble. He began very promisingly, but got confused, and amazed both himself and everybody else, by actually sitting down and leaving the speech unfinished; and, until reminded of that part of his duty, not even thrusting the box into the hand of the intended receiver. He afterwards told me the reason of this. He had not premeditated the scene, and thought he had nothing to do, except in the name of the company to give the box. But as soon as he rose to do this, Kemble, who was beside him, rose also, and with most formidable dignity. This forced Jeffrey to look up to his man; when he found himself annihilated by the tall tragic god; who sank him to the earth at every compliment, by obeisances of overwhelming grace and stateliness.' The incident must have been awkward for Kemble, but it was a genuine and involuntary tribute to the majestic bearing of the great actor.

Shortly after this, in April 1817, there occurred an event which greatly stirred the peaceful waters of Edinburgh social and literary life, and with which Scott's future son-in-law and biographer, John Gibson Lockhart, was to be very prominently associated. This was the founding of theEdinburgh Monthly Magazine. The publisher was John Blackwood. Wishing to develop the magazine on lines of his own, this far-seeing and able gentleman, first shaking himself clear from the two editorial personages who were hampering his energies, started the periodical afresh at the seventh number under the title ofBlackwood's Edinburgh Magazine. The famous No. VII. came like a thunderbolt. All the world wondered. From what sources had Blackwood evoked the wit, the tremendous energy, the boundless audacity of personal attack which at once shocked and delighted the public mind? The Whigs were both tortured and alarmed. The days of their sole literary domination were seen straightway to be over. For them especially a Reign of Terror had begun. They were now to be subjected to the lash of an incomparable, though often excessive, power of ridicule: a form of punishment which always hurts most sorely those to whom the saving grace of humour has been denied. NecessarilyBlackwood's Magazinewas a political engine, the organ of high Toryism. As such, it was liable to the sneer of Cockburn (a sneer which tells with equal justness against all theoretical defenders of current politics): 'In this department it has adhered with respectable constancy to all the follies it was meant to defend. It is a great depository of exploded principles; and indeed it will soon be valuable as a museum of old errors.' But every device of mystification, an example set by Scott, was employed to keep the secret of who were really 'Blackwood's young Tory wags,' and this was further secured by the entirely unsuspected fact, that the editor was actually Blackwood himself. The marvellous thing, now that the facts are known, is the enormous share performed by the two chiefs, Lockhart and Wilson. In their buoyant eagerness to break up the monopoly of Whig literary and political influence, they doubtless went too far, and sometimes knew it. Later on, these early defects were acknowledged and analysed, inPeter's Letters, by the authors themselves. Even they, it may be, hardly realised how much pain they had given, but the almost solemn words of Lord Cockburn indicate very clearly how intense it must have been. 'Posterity,' he says, 'can never be made to feel the surprise and just offence with which, till we were hardened to it, this work was received. The minute circumstances which impart freshness to slander soon evaporate; and the arrows that fester in living reputations and in beating hearts are pointless, or invisible to the eyes of those who search for them afterwards as curiosities.' It was, in fact, the work of young and inexperienced men brimful of genius and spirit, but untaught to discern the dangers in the use of the weapons with which they played.

CHAPTER LIV

Personal Anecdotes of Scott—Washington Irving—The Minister's Daughter—J. G. Lockhart—His Introduction to Scott—Annual Register—39 Castle Street—Scott's 'Den'—Animal Favourites.

In the autumn of 1817 Washington Irving, with whoseHistory of New Yorkby Knickerbocker Scott had been greatly charmed, paid a visit to Abbotsford, and received a hearty welcome. One of the anecdotes told by Irving of this visit may be given here, as illustrating the beautiful courtesy and fine sympathetic feeling with which it was Scott's nature to treat sterling worth and generosity of mind in whatever rank he discovered it. Irving tells how William Laidlaw and his wife came to dinner one day, accompanied by a lady friend. He observed with some curiosity that this by no means extraordinary person, who was middle-aged and only remarkable for her intellectual qualities, was treated by their host with particular attention and courtesy. The occasion was in fact a specially pleasant one, and the company were made to feel that they were cherished guests. On their leaving, Scott, to Irving's great delight, launched into hearty praise of the lady visitor. The daughter of a Scottish minister, who died in debt, she had been left an orphan and destitute. She had at once faced the situation with a brave heart, and though her education was not great, she set up a school for young children, which soon proved in its way a success. But she made her own concerns a secondary object. By submitting to all sorts of privation, she managed to pay off all her father's debts, determined that no slighting word or evil feeling might humble his memory. And this was not all. To the martyr's self-sacrifice she added a divine benevolence. To some who once had been kind to her father and were now fallen on evil days, she did all the service she could by teaching their little ones without reward or fee. Happily her memory is green in the eulogy of the great neighbour to whom she was a kindred spirit: 'She's a fine old Scotch girl, and I delight in her more than in many a fine lady I have known, and I have known many of the finest.'

It was in the following year, in May 1818, that John Gibson Lockhart, then a young barrister with pronounced literary leanings, was first introduced to Scott. It was the moment when, as the great biographer himself has eloquently put it, 'Scott's position was, take it for all in all, what no other man had ever won for himself by the pen alone. His works were the daily food, not only of his countrymen, but of all educated Europe. His society was courted by whatever England could show of eminence. Station, power, wealth, beauty, and genius, strove with each other in every demonstration of respect and worship, and—a few political fanatics and envious poetasters apart—wherever he appeared in town or country, whoever had Scotch blood in him, "gentle or simple," felt it move more rapidly through his veins when he was in the presence of Scott.' But in the midst of this blaze of glory, and while he was dreaming dreams of fortune and family pride, what was it that struck the most keen-eyed of critics when he first saw his hero? Only the plain easy modesty, the kindness of heart whichpervadedevery word, tone, and gesture, the simple qualities which made him 'loved more and more' by his earliest friends. It was at the house of Mr. Home Drummond, a grandson of Lord Kames, that the meeting took place. Like every other literary aspirant, Lockhart was astonished and gratified by the cordiality and kindly appreciation of the elder writer. 'When the ladies' (he says) 'retired from the dinner-table, I happened to sit next him; and he, having heard that I had lately returned from a tour in Germany, made that country and its recent literature the subject of some conversation. In the course of it, I told him that when, on reaching the inn at Weimar, I asked the waiter whether Goethe was then in the town, the man stared as if he had not heard the name before; and that, on my repeating the question, addingGoethe der grosse Dichter, he shook his head as doubtfully as before—until the landlord solved our difficulties, by suggesting that perhaps the traveller might mean "Herr Geheimer-Rath(Privy Councillor)von Goethe."—Scott seemed amused with this and said, "I hope you will come one of these days and see me at Abbotsford; and when you reach Selkirk or Melrose, be sure you ask even the landlady for nobody butthe Sheriff." I mentioned how much any one must be struck with the majestic beauty of Goethe's countenance—the noblest certainly by far that I have ever yet seen—"Well," said he, "the grandest demi-god I ever saw was Dr. Carlyle, minister of Musselburgh, commonly calledJupiter Carlyle, from having sat more than once for the king of gods and men to Gavin Hamilton—and a shrewd, clever old carle was he, no doubt, but no more a poet than his precentor. As for poets, I have seen, I believe, all the best of our own time and country—and though Burns had the most glorious eyes imaginable, I never thought any of them would come up to an artist's notion of the character, except Byron."'

Soon after this Lockhart was, on Scott's recommendation, invited by the Ballantynes to take Scott's place in working up the historical part of theirAnnual Register. Thus they met pretty frequently during the ensuing summer session, a circumstance to which we owe Lockhart's very complete and first-hand description of Scott's working 'den' at 39 Castle Street and of his social life at this period. The den was a small square back-room behind the dining parlour. It looked out upon a dull back-yard with a small square of turf. The walls of the room were lined with books, mostly stately folios and quartos beautifully kept, as befitted a lover of books. There was one massive table, on which was his own desk, and one opposite for an occasional amanuensis. On the top lay his law papers, while his MSS., letters, and proof-sheets were under his hand on the desk below. Before the desk stood his large elbow-chair, and there were only two other chairs in the room. Beside the window was a pile of green tin boxes, on the top of which was a fox's tail mounted on a handle of old silver and used for dusting the top of a book as occasion required. He had a ladder for scaling the high shelves, which is described as 'low, broad, well carpeted, and strongly guarded with oaken rails.' His living companions in his den were usually a venerable tom-cat called Hinse, which had a liking for the top of the ladder, and the noble stag-hound Maida, whose lair was on the hearth-rug. 'I venture to say' (Lockhart remarks) 'that Scott was never five minutes in any room before the little pets of the family, whether dumb or lisping, had found out his kindness for all their generation.'

In conversation among his friends, Scott was always natural, sensible, and good-humoured. His ideal society, as we have seen, was the simple but high-toned friendliness, with courtly attention to old manners and customs of the social board—the ways of the old-fashioned generation before 1800, when Edinburgh society still took its tone from the Scottish aristocracy and gentry. After this period Edinburgh table-talk and manners were led by the lawyers. Men shone in society by contests of dialectics, brilliant disquisitions, 'such as might be transferred without alteration to the pages of a critical review.' Scott was of another world from this. He admired the dexterity and skill displayed, but he was not tempted to take part. It lacked the touch of nature which would have made him acknowledge kin. So everybody else was satisfied, and Scott was not displeased. The great poet, the writer of conversations which had heightened the gaiety of millions, was perfectly content to be considered inferior as a table-companion to 'this or that master of luminous dissertation or quick rejoinder, who now sleeps as forgotten as his grandmother.' To appreciate, it is necessary to know something and to sympathise. The persons who called Scott's conversation 'common-place' were practically comparing the Waverley Novels to Dugald Stewart's lectures, and would have denounced Shakespeare for making up hisHamletout of popular quotations. It was 'ignorance, madam, pure ignorance,' without the wit to acknowledge, and in many cases political prejudice was also present. To one of the latter Lockhart heard Lord Cockburn nobly reply: 'I have the misfortune to think differently from you; in my humble opinion, Walter Scott'ssenseis a still more wonderful thing than hisgenius.' Nothing could be better: a noble and excellent saying. And to similar effect in hisMemorialshe testifies that scarcely even in his novels was Scott more striking or delightful than in society; where his halting limb, the bur in the throat, the heavy cheeks, the high Goldsmith-forehead, the unkempt locks, and general plainness of appearance, with the Scotch accent and stories and sayings, all graced by gaiety, simplicity, and kindness, made a combination most worthy of being enjoyed.

CHAPTER LV

Scotland Edinburgh Society—Lockhart's Opinion—Scott's Drives in Edinburgh—Love of Antiquities—The Sunday Dinners at 39 Castle Street—The Maclean Clephanes—Erskine, Clerk, C. K. Sharpe, Sir A. Boswell, W. Allan,—Favourite Dishes.

Ignorant prejudice gradually disappeared. The charm of Scott's conversation was found to be as great, in fact the same, as that of his writings. Mingling with and wishing to emulate London society, Edinburgh great folks came to understand that social intercourse ought to aim at enjoyment and relaxation, not at the display of alleged wit and amateur disquisitions on speculative themes. Then they discovered that Scott's easy, natural humour, his ever-ready and picturesque descriptions, his quaint old-world sayings and diverting sketches and anecdotes, nay, his very prejudices, always honest and so very lovable when understood to their foundation, were unique treasures even from the narrowest point of view. This was what all, long before 1818, recognised whose opinion was worth considering. But Lockhart, who had the best means of knowing, as being himself 'one of them,' says that even then the old theory, that Scott's conversation was 'commonplace,' lingered on in the general opinion of the city, especially among the smart praters of theOuter House. Of course it was the cue of these praters to differ from their elders, and few of them, after all, had perhaps enjoyed what they made a boast of affecting to depreciate. Lockhart, who was certainly in the Whig sense the strongestintellectthat ever adorned Edinburgh, both enjoyed and appreciated. And fortunately for usminores, he has told what he saw and rejoiced in. He says: 'It was impossible to listen to Scott's oral narrations, whether gay or serious, or to the felicitous fun with which he parried absurdities of all sorts, without discovering better qualities in his talk thanwit—and of a higher order; I mean especially a power ofvivid painting—the true and primary sense of what is calledImagination. He was like Jacques—though not a "Melancholy Jacques"; and "moralised" a common topic into a "thousand similitudes." Shakespeare and the banished Duke would have found him "full of matter." He disliked mere disquisitions in Edinburgh, and preparedimpromptusin London; and puzzled the promoters of such things sometimes by placid silence, sometimes by broad merriment. To such men he seemedcommon-place—not so to the most dexterous masters in what was to some of them almost a science; not so to Rose, Hallam, Moore, or Rogers,—to Ellis, Mackintosh, Croker, or Canning.'

When in Edinburgh, Scott's only formal outing was an afternoon drive in an open carriage, sometimes to Blackford Hill, or Ravelston, and so home by Corstorphine, sometimes to Portobello, keeping as close as possible to the sea. An old man who died last year (1905) used to tell how, when he was a boy, he remembered Scott alighting and coming some distance across a field to speak a few kind words to him and ask after his parents, in whom he took an interest. When he went home, his mother told him about the great man and bade her son remember that day, for if he lived to be an old man, he would be proud to talk of it to his children's children. As he drove through the city, it was Scott's greatest enjoyment to gaze and muse upon its natural beauties, and especially its remaining antiquities. He would often make a long circuit in order, as Lockhart observed, 'to spend a few minutes on the vacant esplanade of Holyrood, or under the darkest shadows of the Castle rock, where it overhangs the Grassmarket, and the huge slab that still marks where the gibbet of Porteous and the Covenanters had its station. His coachman knew him too well to move at a Jehu's pace amidst such scenes as these. No funeral hearse crept more leisurely than did his landau up the Canongate or the Cowgate; and not a queer tottering gable but recalled to him some long-buried memory of splendour or bloodshed, which, by a few words, he set before the hearer in the reality of life. His image is so associated in my mind with the antiquities of his native place, that I cannot now revisit them without feeling as if I were treading on his gravestone.'

But of all pleasant memories of the Master well-beloved, the most delightful to conjure up is that of the good Clerk as host at the Sunday 'dinner without the silver dishes,' as he was wont to call it. It was always a gathering of dear and long-cherished friends. All were delighted to meet, and all were prepared to be happy. Gladdest of all was their host, who came into the room 'rubbing his hands, his face bright and gleesome, like a boy arriving at home for the holidays, his Peppers and Mustards gambolling about his heels, and even the stately Maida grinning and wagging his tail in sympathy.' Most of the intimates who came to these parties have already been mentioned. There was Mrs. Maclean Clephane, with whom Scott would playfully dispute on the subject of Ossian. Her daughters would accompany her, to delight all, especially Scott, with the poetry and music of their native isles. They had made him their guardian by their own choice, and were loved for their own sakes. The eldest was that Lady Crompton with whom, as he tells in theJournal, he travelled to Glasgow in September 1827, and had 'as pleasant a journey as the kindness, wit, and accomplishments of my companion could make it.' When they reached Glasgow, they met, at the Buck's Head, Mrs. Maclean Clephane and her two daughters. He mentions that after dinner the ladies sang, 'particularly Aunt Jane, who has more taste and talent than half the people going with great reputations on their backs.' Then there were the Skenes, the Macdonald Buchanans, and all theniecesandnephewsof the Clerks' table alliance. 'The well-beloved Erskine,' says Lockhart, 'was seldom absent; and very often Terry or James Ballantyne came with him—sometimes, though less frequently, Constable. To say nothing of such old cronies as Clerk, Thomson, and Kirkpatrick Sharpe.' It was of his boyhood's friend and mentor, Clerk, that Scott said he feared he would leave the world little more than the report of his fame. It was his opinion, as well as that of other competent judges, that he had never met a man of greater powers than Clerk. Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe was also regarded by Scott very highly, and is sketched in a lively page in theJournal, 1825. His effeminacy of voice, his clever and fanciful drawings—which he was too aristocratic to use for increasing his small income—his odd curiosity for scandal centuries old, made Sharpe a very remarkable figure. 'My idea is' (says Scott) 'that C. K. S. with his oddities, tastes, satire, and high aristocratic feelings, resembles Horace Walpole—perhaps in his person also, in a general way.'

Lockhart mentions also Sir Alexander Boswell, author of the humorous song,Jeannie dang the Weaver, and a great bibliomaniac, Sir Alexander Don of Newton, 'the model of a cavalier,' and William Allan, R.A., whom Scott calls a very agreeable, simple-mannered, and pleasant man. Allan became Sir William, President of the Royal Scottish Academy from 1838 to 1850. In July 1826 Scott mentions his having been to see Allan's picture of 'the Landing of Queen Mary.' Three or four of these friends, with Scott and his family, took their places every Sunday at the 'plain dinner' in No. 39 Castle Street.

Scott kept a bounteously loaded table. He was himself a hearty eater, preferring plain substantial fare. He was not a gourmand, still less a glutton. His one good meal was breakfast. At dinner his appetite was neither keen nor nice. 'The only dishes he was at all fond of were the old-fashioned ones to which he had been accustomed in the days of Saunders Fairford.' Readers of the Novels have heard of them all, and few will forget the conclusion of theFortunes of Nigel: 'My lords and lieges, let us all to our dinner, for thecock-a-leekieis cooling.'

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