English Lands Letters and Kings 8

English Lands Letters and Kings 8

The Waverley Dispensation._

 

Meantime, our author has married--a marriage, Goldwin Smith says, of

“intellectual disparagement”; which I suppose means that Mrs. Scott was

not learned and bookish--as she certainly was not; but she was honest,

true-hearted, and domestic. Mr. Redding profanely says that she was used

to plead, “Walter, my dear, you must write a new book, for I want another

silk dress.” I think this is apocryphal; and there is good reason to

believe that she gave a little hearty home huzza at each one of Mr.

Scott’s quick succeeding triumphs.

 

Our author has also changed his home; first from the pretty little village

of Lasswade, which is down by Dalkeith, to Ashestiel by the Yarrow; and

thence again to a farm-house, near to that unfortunate pile of Abbotsford,

which stands on the Tweed bank, shadowed by the trees he planted, and

shadowed yet more heavily by the story of his misfortunes. I notice a

disposition in some recent writers to disparage this notable country home

as pseudo-Gothic and flimsy. This gives a false impression of a structure

which, though it lack that singleness of __EXPRESSION__ and subordination of

details which satisfy a professional critic, does yet embody in a

singularly interesting way, and with solid construction, all the

aspirations, tastes, clannish vanities and archæologic whims of the great

novelist. The castellated tower is there to carry the Scottish standard,

and the cloister to keep alive reverent memory of old religious houses;

and the miniature Court gate, with its warder’s horn; and the Oriole

windows, whose details are, maybe, snatched from Kenilworth; the mass,

too, is impressive and smacks all over of Scott’s personality and of the

traditions he cherished.

 

I am tempted to introduce here some notes of a visit made to this locality

very many years ago. I had set off on a foot-pilgrimage from the old

border town of Berwick-on-Tweed; had kept close along the banks of the

river, seeing men drawing nets for salmon, whose silvery scales flashed in

the morning sun. All around swept those charming fields of Tweed-side,

green with the richest June growth; here and there were shepherds at their

sheep washing; old Norham Castle presently lifted its gray buttresses into

view; then came the long Coldstream bridge, with its arches shimmering in

the flood below; and after this the palace of the Duke of Roxburgh. In

thus following up leisurely the Tweed banks from Berwick, I had slept the

first night at Kelso; had studied the great fine bit of ruin which is

there, and had caught glimpses of Teviot-dale and of the Eildon Hills; had

wandered out of my way for a sight of Smailholme tower, and of Sandy

Knowe--both associated with Scott’s childhood; I passed Dryburgh, where he

lies buried, and at last on an evening of early June, 1845, a stout

oarsman ferried me across the Tweed and landed me in Melrose.

 

I slept at the George Inn--dreaming (as many a young wayfarer in those

lands has since done), of Ivanhoe and Rebecca, and border wars and _Old

Mortality_. Next morning, after a breakfast upon trout taken from some

near stream (very likely the Yarrow or the Gala-water), I strolled two

miles or so along the road which followed the Tweed bank upon the southern

side, and by a green foot-gate entered the Abbotsford grounds. The forest

trees--not over high at that time--were those which the master had

planted. From his favorite outdoor seat, sheltered by a thicket of

arbor-vitæ, could be caught a glimpse of the rippled surface of the Tweed

and of the turrets of the house.

 

It was all very quiet--quiet in the wood-walks; quiet as you approached

the court-yard; the master dead; the family gone; I think there was a yelp

from some young hound in an out-building, and a twitter from some birds I

did not know; there was the unceasing murmur of the river. Besides these

sounds, the silence was unbroken; and when I rang the bell at the entrance

door, the jangle of it was very startling; startling a little terrier,

too, whose quick, sharp bark rang noisily through the outer court.

 

Only an old house-keeper was in charge, who had fallen into that dreadful

parrot-like way of telling visitors what things were best worth

seeing--which frets one terribly. What should you or I care (fresh from

_Guy Mannering_ or _Kenilworth_) whether a bit of carving came from

Jedburgh or Kelso? or about the jets in the chandelier, or the way in

which a Russian Grand Duke wrote his name in the visitors’ book?

 

But when we catch sight of the desk at which the master wrote, or of the

chair in which he sat, and of his shoes and coat and cane--looking as if

they might have been worn yesterday--these seem to bring us nearer to the

man who has written so much to cheer and to charm the world. There was,

too, a little box in the corridor, simple and iron-bound, with the line

written below it, “Post will close at two.” It was as if we had heard the

master of the house say it. Perhaps the notice was in his handwriting (he

had been active there in 1831-2--just thirteen years before)--perhaps not;

but--somehow--more than the library, or the portrait bust, or the chatter

of the well-meaning house-keeper, it brought back the halting old

gentleman in his shooting-coat, and with ivory-headed cane--hobbling with

a vigorous step along the corridor, to post in that iron-bound box a

packet--maybe a chapter of _Woodstock_.

 

I have spoken of the vacant house--family gone: The young Sir Walter

Scott, of the British army, and heir to the estate--was at that date

(1845) absent in the Indies; and only two years thereafter died at sea on

his voyage home. Charles Scott, the only brother of the younger Sir

Walter, died in 1841.[22] Miss Anne Scott, the only unmarried daughter of

the author of _Waverley_, died--worn-out with tenderest care of mother and

father, and broken-hearted--in 1833. Her only sister, Mrs. (Sophia Scott)

Lockhart, died in 1837. Her oldest son--John Hugh, familiarly known as

“Hugh Little John”--the crippled boy, for whom had been written the _Tales

of a Grandfather_, and the darling of the two households upon

Tweed-side--died in 1831. I cannot forbear quoting here a charming little

memorial of him, which, within the present year, has appeared in Mr.

Lang’s _Life of Lockhart_.

 

“A figure as of one of Charles Lamb’s dream-children haunts the

little beck at Chiefswood, and on that haugh at Abbotsford, where

Lockhart read the manuscript of the _Fortunes of Nigel_, fancy may

see ‘Hugh Little John,’ ‘throwing stones into the burn,’ for so he

called the Tweed. While children study the _Tales of a Grandfather_,

he does not want friends in this world to remember and envy the boy

who had Sir Walter to tell him stories.”--P. 75, vol. ii.

 

A younger son of Lockhart, Walter Scott by name, became, at the death of

the younger Walter Scott, inheritor of all equities in the landed estate

upon Tweed-side, and the proper Laird of Abbotsford. His story is a short

and a sad one; he was utterly unworthy, and died almost unbefriended at

Versailles in January, 1853.

 

His father, J. G. Lockhart, acknowledging a picture of this son, under

date of 1843, in a letter addressed to his daughter Charlotte--(later

Mrs. Hope-Scott,[23] and mother of the present proprietress of

Abbotsford), writes with a grief he could not cover:--

 

“I am not sorry to have it by me, though it breaks my heart to

recall the date. It is of the sweet, innocent, happy boy, home for

Sunday from Cowies [his school].… Oh, God! how soon that day became

clouded, and how dark its early close! Well, I suppose there is

another world; if not, sure this is a blunder.”

 

I have not spoken--because there seemed no need to speak--of the way in

which those marvellous romantic fictions of Sir Walter came pouring from

the pen, under a cloud of mystery, and of how the great burden of his

business embarrassments--due largely to the recklessness of his jolly,

easy-going friends, the Ballantynes--overwhelmed him at last. Indeed, in

all I have ventured to say of Scott, I have a feeling of its

impertinence--as if I were telling you about your next-door neighbor: we

all know that swift, brilliant, clouded career so well! But are those

novels of his to live, and to delight coming generations, as they have the

past? I do not know what the very latest critics may have to say; but, for

my own part, I have strong belief that a century or two more will be sure

to pass over before people of discernment, and large humanities, and of

literary appreciation, will cease to read and to enjoy such stories as

that of the _Talisman of Kenilworth_ and of _Old Mortality_. I know ’tis

objected, and with much reason, that he wrote hastily, carelessly--that

his stories are in fact (what Carlyle called them) extemporaneous stories.

Yet, if they had been written under other conditions, could we have

counted upon the heat and the glow which gives them illumination?

 

No, no--we do not go to him for word-craft; men of shorter imaginative

range, and whose judgments wait on conventional rule, must guide us in

such direction, and pose as our modellers of style. Goldsmith and Swift

both may train in that company. But this master we are now considering

wrote so swiftly and dashed so strongly into the current of what he had to

say, that he was indifferent to methods and words, except what went to

engage the reader and keep him always cognizant of his purpose. But do you

say that this is the best aim of all writing? Most surely it is wise for a

writer to hold attention by what arts he can: failing of this, he fails of

the best half of his intent; but if he gains this by simple means, by

directness, by limpid language, and no more of it than the thought calls

for, and by such rhythmic and beguiling use of it as tempts the reader to

follow, he is a safer exemplar than one who by force of genius can

accomplish his aims by loose __EXPRESSION__s and redundance of words.

 

Next it is objected to these old favorites of ours, that they are not

clever in the exhibit and explication of mental processes, and their

analysis of motives is incomplete. Well, I suppose this to be true; and

that he did, to a certain extent (as Carlyle used to allege grumblingly),

work from the outside-in. He did live in times when men fell

straightforwardly in love, without counting the palpitations of the heart;

and when heroes struck honest blows without reckoning in advance upon the

probable contractile power of their biceps muscles. Again, it is said that

his history often lacks precision and sureness of statement. Well, the

dates are certainly sometimes twisted a few years out of their proper

lines and seasons; but it is certain, also, that he does give the

atmosphere and the coloring of historic periods in a completer and more

satisfying way than many much carefuller chroniclers, and his portraits of

great historic personages are by common consent--even of the critics--more

full of the life of their subjects, and of a realistic exhibit of their

controlling characteristics, than those of the historians proper. Nothing

can be more sure than that Scott was not a man of great critical learning;

nothing is more sure than that he was frequently at fault in minor

details; but who will gainsay the fact that he was among the most charming

and beneficent of story-tellers?

 

There may be households which will rule him out as old fashioned and

stumbling, and wordy, and long; but I know of one, at least, where he will

hold his place, as among the most delightful of visitors--and where on

winter nights he will continue to bring with him (as he has brought so

many times already) the royal figure of the Queen Elizabeth--shining in

her jewels, or sulking in her coquetries; and Dandie Dinmont, with his

pow-wow of Pepper and Mustard; and King Jamie, with Steenie and jingling

Geordie; and the patient, prudent, excellent Jeanie Deans; and the weak,

old, amiable mistress of Tillietudlem; and Rebecca, and the Lady in the

Green Mantle, and Dominie Sampson, and Peter Peebles, and Di Vernon, and

all the rest!

 

 

_Glints of Royalty._

 

They tell us Scott loved kings: why not? Romanticism was his nurse, from

the days when he kicked up his baby heels under the shadows of Smailholme

Tower, and Feudalism was his foster-parent. Always he loved banners and

pageantry, and always the glitter and pomp which give their under or over

tones to his pages of balladry. And if he stood in awe of titles and of

rank, and felt the cockles of his heart warming in contact with these,

’twas not by reason of a vulgar tuft-hunting spirit, nor was it due to the

crass toadyism which seeks reflected benefit; but it grew, I think, out of

sheer mental allegiance to feudal splendors and traditions.

 

Whether Scott ever personally encountered the old king, George III., may

be doubtful; but I recall in some of his easy, family letters (perhaps to

his eldest boy Walter), most respectful and kindly allusions to the august

master of the royal Windsor household--who ordered his home affairs so

wisely--keeping “good hours;” while, amid the turbulences and unrest which

belonged to the American and French Revolutions--succeeding each other in

portentous sequence--he was waning toward that period of woful mental

imbecility which beset him at last, and which clouded an earlier

chapter[24] of our record. The Prince Regent--afterward George IV.--was

always well disposed toward Scott; had read the _Minstrel_, and _Marmion_,

with the greatest gratification (he did sometimes read), and told Lord

Byron as much; even comparing the Scot with Homer--which was as near to

classicism as the Prince often ran. But Byron, in his _English Bards_,

etc., published in his earlier days, had made his little satiric dab at

the _Minstrel_--finding a lively hope in its being