CONCLUDING YEARS—DECEASE.
In February 1830, Scott experienced the first decidedly bad symptom, in an attack of an apoplectic nature, which caused him to fall speechless and insensible on the floor. This, it seems, was a hereditary affection in his family, and it therefore gave him the greater apprehension, though his physicians were of opinion that the attack proceeded from the stomach. On still went the pen of the ready-writer, now engaged on a volume ofDemonologyfor Murray’sFamily Library. To obtain even more time for literary task-work, he now resigned his clerkship on a retiring allowance of £800 a year, and went to fix himself at Abbotsford as a permanent residence. It was an injudicious step, as it deprived him of the society of most of his old friends, and threw him more and more upon that task-work which had already been prosecuted only too zealously. His friends,Cadell and Ballantyne, were now sensible that he had carried his zeal for the discharge of his debts too far, and would have fain restricted him to lighter duty; but it was difficult to deal with a mind acting under such powerful impulses. Greatly against their wishes, he commenced a new novel, styledCount Robert of Paris, which, when it appeared, shewed very clearly how glory had departed from him. He also embroiled his mind in the politics of the crisis then passing, and wrote a long pamphlet against the reforming measures of the day, which afterwards he was induced to suppress. The exaggerated view which he took of the reform cause is a painful chapter in his history, not merely as shewing him unusually ill informed and weak of judgment on passing events, but because it gave a needless addition to anxieties of a real kind which were now pressing severely on the springs of life. Amidst the vexations arising to him from public affairs, one ray of pleasure visited him when his creditors (December 1830) presented him with his library, furniture, plate, and articles of virtù, considered as equivalent to £10,000, thus enabling him to make a provision for the younger branches of his family. These gentlemen were led to this act of generosity by their sense of his unparalleled exertions in their behalf. Their claims against Scott had now been reduced to £54,000, and as he had insured £22,000 upon his life in their favour, and the Waverley Novels were continuing to produce large returns, all doubt of the ultimate discharge of the claims had ceased. About this time, the honour of being made a member of the Privy Council was offered to him, but peremptorily declined, as unsuitable to his circumstances.
In November of the past year, Scott had had another slight stroke of apoplexy. He lived in the most sparing manner, yet this did not prevent a distinct paralytic affection befalling him in April 1831. From this he recovered, by the care of a good surgeon, in a few days, and was then placed, by way of caution, upon extremely low diet, which, however, he did not always adhere to. He was now extremely infirm in walking, and, from heedlessness, often tumbled over articles of furniture or other impediments. The desire to be writing continued, nevertheless, in full vigour as a ruling passion. Here, however, he was destined to receive a shock more terrible to him than bodily illness, when his friends, Cadell and Ballantyne, felt it right to tell him that his tale ofCount Robert of Pariswas, in their opinion, an entire failure. ‘The blow is a stunning one, I suppose’—thus he speaks in his diary—‘for I scarcely feel it.... I am at sea in the dark, and the vessel leaky, I think, into the bargain. I have suffered terribly, that is the truth, rather in body than in mind, and I often wish I could lie down and sleep without waking. But I will fight it out if I can.’ His friends and medical attendants strongly advised him to intermit these severe exertions, which evidently were only a gentle form of self-murder; but they preached to deaf ears. They were equally unsuccessful in their endeavours to keep him back from a county election in which he felt interested. He went—took part in the proceedings—and came to a collision with the populace, which could not but leave distressing effects on one who, on all other points, delighted to stand in kindly relations towards the humbler classes. In the very depth of this dark crisis he began a tale, calledCastle Dangerous, in whichthe failing powers of his mind became even more painfully conspicuous. He was now fully sensible that, in all probability, he had but a short time to live; but it only made him the more eager to work for the acquittance of his great obligations. So much was this the case, that, being at a country-house in Lanarkshire on a short visit, the intelligence of a friend having fallen down suddenly in a fit, from which it was not expected he would recover, caused him instantly to break up his engagement, and go home; answering to all remonstrances on the subject: ‘The night cometh when no man may work.’
He was now advised to spend the ensuing winter in Italy; and the government having handsomely placed a ship at his disposal, he sailed for Naples in October, attended by his eldest son and younger daughter. He was most unwilling to leave home, but a long-entertained wish to see some of the continental countries besides France served to reconcile him to the change. The voyage was a pleasant one: he enjoyed the objects to be seen at Malta, so full of middle-age associations, and thought of fictions he could found upon them. On the 17th December, he reached Naples, where everything was done by the king and the best society of the place, including many English, to render his residence happy. His chief companion here was Sir William Gell, an invalid English gentleman, who wrote upon the antiquities of Italy, and with whom Scott at once became extremely intimate. He beheld most of the classical antiquities with indifference—saying only at Pompeii: ‘The city of the dead!’—but was keenly interested in any object or document which took his mind into the middle ages. Here he actually wrote a new tale (entitledThe Siege of Malta), and commenced a second, neither of which was deemed by his friends as fit to see the light. For some time he entertained cheerful views about his health; he was also under an impression that his debts were all discharged: it is needless to say that in both particulars he was deceived. Thus about four months rolled on. He then became anxious to return home, and, as he would not obey rule either as to writing or his diet, it was thought best to gratify him, in the hope that a more effectual control might there be exercised.
Attended by his younger son, who had been placed at Naples as an attaché to the embassy there, and by his younger daughter as before, Scott left Naples for Tweedside on the 16th of April. He paused a few weeks at Rome, chiefly to gratify his daughter with the sights, of which, however, he himself also partook, beholding, as before, the medieval antiquities with the greater share of interest. The houses occupied by the dethroned Stuarts, and their tombs in St Peter’s, were objects of peculiar interest in his eyes. Here, as at Naples, he was treated by persons of the highest rank, native and foreign, with the greatest respect. Leaving Rome on the 11th of May, he proceeded by Venice, through the Tyrol, to Frankfort, with a haste which must have been unfavourable to him, but which nothing could control. It was soon after necessary for him to have blood let by his servant Nicolson, who had been instructed for that purpose. On the 13th of June he reached London, totally exhausted. It was now evident that this illustrious man was drawing near to the end of a greater journey. He was kept three weeks in London, during which his friends saw in him but occasionalgleams of sense. He never knew distinctly where he was: he knew, however, that he was not at Abbotsford, and there he yearned to be. To gratify him, he was taken to Scotland by sea, and from Edinburgh, as soon as possible, to his own house. As he approached it, he began faintly to recognise familiar objects, and by and by it was found difficult to keep him in the carriage, so greatly was he excited. At length, alighting at the porch, and seeing his steward and friend, he exclaimed: ‘Ha, Willie Laidlaw! O man, how often have I thought of you!’ His dogs came about his knees, and he sobbed over them until stupor fell again upon him. He remained in the sad state to which he was now reduced for two months. Sometimes the mind cleared a little, and on one occasion he caused himself to be placed at his desk to write, where, however, the fingers failed to grasp the pen, and he sunk back weeping in his chair. More generally he was in a state of slumber. When sensible, he caused the Bible and church services to be read to him. At length, on the 21st of September 1832, the scene was gently closed. Sir Walter died in the sixty-second year of his age—years undoubtedly being cut off from the sum of his existence by that terrible exhaustion consequent on his later literary task-work.
The funeral of this illustrious Scotsman was appointed to take place on Wednesday the 26th; and, preparatory to that melancholy ceremony, about three hundred gentlemen were invited by Major Sir Walter Scott, the eldest son of the deceased. Among the persons thus called upon were many individuals whose acquaintance of Sir Walter Scott was simply of a local character. On an occasion like this, when the most honoured head in the country was to be laid in the grave, it mighthave been expected that many individuals would have come of their own accord, especially from the neighbouring capital, to form part in a procession, which, however melancholy, was altogether of a historical character. Considering what the deceased had done for literature—what, more specially, he had done to popularise Scotland, its scenery, traditions, and character—we might not unnaturally have looked for some very marked demonstration of respect, gratitude, and affection. But great events sometimes make less impression at the time than they do many years after: and such was the apathy towards this extraordinary solemnity, that only ten or twelve persons, including the writer of this and his brother William, had come from Edinburgh. It is also a very remarkable circumstance, that, as in ordinary funerals, not nearly the whole of those who had been invited found it convenient to attend.
After a refection in the style usually observed on such occasions, the funeral train set forward to Dryburgh, where the family of the deceased possess a small piece of sepulchral ground, amidst the ruins of the abbey. The spot originally belonged to the Halyburtons of Merton, an ancient and respectable baronial family, of which Sir Walter’s paternal grandmother was a member. It is composed simply of the area comprehended by four pillars, in one of the aisles of the ruined building. On a side-wall is the following inscription: ‘Sub hoc tumulo jacetJoannes Haliburtonus, Barro de Mertoun, vir religione et virtute clarus, qui obiit 17 die Augusti, 1640;’ below which there is a coat of arms. On the back wall, the latter history of the spot is expressed on a small tablet, as follows: ‘Hunc locum sepulturæ D. Seneschallus, Buchaniæ comes,Gualtero,homæ, etRoberto Scott, nepotibus Haliburtoni, concessit, 1791.’—That is to say, the Earl of Buchan (lately proprietor of the ruins and adjacent ground) granted this place of sepulture, in 1791, to Walter, Thomas, and Robert Scott, descendants of the Laird of Halyburton. The persons indicated were the father and uncles of Sir Walter Scott; but though all are dead, no other member of the family lies there, besides his uncle Robert and his deceased lady. From the limited dimensions of the place, the body of the author ofWaverleywas placed in a direction north and south, instead of the usual fashion; and thus, in death at least, he has resembled the Cameronians, of whose character he was supposed to have given such an unfavourable picture in one of his tales.
The funeral procession consisted of about sixty vehicles of different kinds, and a few horsemen. It was melancholy at the very first to see the deceased carried out of a house which bore so many marks of his taste, and of which every point, and almost every article of furniture, was so identified with himself. But it was doubly touching to see him carried insensible and inurned through the beautiful scenery, which he has in different ways rendered, from its most majestic to its minutest features, a matter of interest unto all time. There lay the gray and august ruin of Melrose Abbey, whose broken arches he has rebuilt in fancy, and whose deserted aisles he has repeopled with all their former tenants—as lovely in its decay as ever; while he who had given it all its charm was passing by, unconscious of its existence, and never more to behold it. At every successive turn of the way appeared some object which he had either loved because it was thesubject of former song, or rendered delightful by his own—from the Eildon Hills, renowned in the legendary history of Michael Scott—to
‘Drygrange, with the milk-white yowes,’Twixt Tweed and Leader standing;’
‘Drygrange, with the milk-white yowes,’Twixt Tweed and Leader standing;’
‘Drygrange, with the milk-white yowes,’Twixt Tweed and Leader standing;’
‘Drygrange, with the milk-white yowes,
’Twixt Tweed and Leader standing;’
to Cowdenknows, where once spear and helm
‘Glanced gaily through the broom;’
‘Glanced gaily through the broom;’
‘Glanced gaily through the broom;’
‘Glanced gaily through the broom;’
and so on to the heights above Gladswood, where Smailholm Castle appeared in sight—the scene of his childhood being thus brought, after all the transactions of a mighty and glorious life, into the same prospect with his grave.
During the time of the funeral, all business was suspended at the burgh of Selkirk and the villages of Darnick and Melrose; and in the former of these hamlets several of the signs of the traders were covered with black cloth, while a flag of crape was mounted on the old tower of Darnick, which rears itself in the midst of the inferior buildings. At every side avenue and opening, stood a group of villagers at gaze—few of them bearing the external signs of mourning, but all apparently impressed with a proper sense of the occasion. The village matrons and children, clustered in windows or in lanes, displayed a mingled feeling of sorrow for the loss, and curiosity and wonder for the show. The husbandmen suspended their labour, and leaned pensively over the enclosures. Old infirm people sat out of doors, where some of them, perhaps, were little accustomed to sit, surveying the passing cavalcade. And though the feelings of the gazers had, perhaps, as much reference to the local judge—‘theShirra’—as to the poet of the world and of time, the whole had astriking effect. Those forming the procession, so far as they could abstract themselves from the feeling of the occasion, were also impressed with the extraordinary appearance which it bore, as it dragged its enormous length through the long reaches of the road—the hearse sometimes appearing on a far height, while the rear vehicles were stealing their way through a profound valley or chasm. The sky was appropriately hung, during the whole time of the ceremony, with a thick mass of cloud, which canopied the vale from one end to the other like a pall.
Towards nightfall the procession arrived within the umbrageous precincts of Dryburgh; and the coffin, being taken from the hearse, was borne along in slow and solemn wise through the shady walks, the mourners following to the amount of about three hundred. Before leaving Abbotsford, homage had been done to the religious customs of the country by the pronunciation of a prayer by Dr Baird; the funeral service of the Episcopal Church (to which the deceased belonged) was now read in the usual manner by the Rev. John Williams, Rector of the Edinburgh Academy, and Vicar of Lampeter, whose distinction in literature and in scholarship eminently entitled him to this honour. The scene was at this time worthy of the occasion. In a small green space, surrounded by the broken but picturesque ruins of a Gothic abbey, and overshadowed by wild foliage, just tinged with the melancholy hues of autumn, with mouldering statuary, and broken monuments meeting the eye wherever it attempted to pierce, stood the uncovered group of mourners, amongst whom could be detected but one feeling—a consciousness that the greatest man their country ever produced was herereceiving from them the last attentions that man can pay to his brother man—which, however, in this case, reflected honour, not from the living to the dead, but (and to such a degree!) from the dead to the living. In this scene, where the efforts of man seemed struck with desolation, and those of nature crowned with beauty and triumph, the voice of prayer sounded with peculiar effect; for it is rare that the words of Holy Writ are pronounced in such a scene; and it must be confessed that they can seldom be pronounced over such a ‘departed brother.’ The grave was worthy of a poet—was worthy of Scott.—And so there he lies, amidst his own loved scenes, awaiting throughout the duration of time the visits of yearly thousands, after which the awakening of eternity, when alone can he be reduced to a level with other men.