by John Buchan
This advice must have been prompted by reflections on his own position. He realized that the floating debt of the Ballantyne firm was mounting rapidly, largely owing to his own drawings. He was not happy about the whole business of accommodation bills, and in St Ronan’s Well had expressed his doubts.
“There is maybe an accommodation bill discounted now and then, Mr Touchwood; but men must have accommodation, or the world would stand still — accommodation is the grease that makes the wheels go.”
“Ay, makes them go down hill to the devil,” answered Touchwood, “I left you bothered about one Air bank, but the whole country is an Air bank now, I think — and who is to pay the piper?”
Constable, too, had his moments of disquiet. In August 1823 he pointed out to Scott that the accommodation he had granted to the Ballantyne firm was as high as £20,000 and asked that it should be reduced to a more prudent figure, such as £8000. Scott agreed, but it would appear that any reduction effected was only temporary. There had also been a proposal to get an accountant to examine the whole state of affairs between the two firms, but to this Scott seems to have objected. In the spring of 1825, when Scott reflected on his situation, he must have been aware that it had its perils. The Ballantyne debt was now in the neighbourhood of £40,000 and he himself had also drawn direct on Constable for large advances. Abbotsford, to be sure, was completed, and his expensive heir was finally settled in life, but there were heavy arrears to be paid off before he could clear his feet. In 1814 he had been in a position of far less difficulty and had taken vigorous action; why in 1825 did he let matters drift — nay, was even toying with the idea of purchasing Faldonside for a sum not far short of the Ballantyne debt? The answer seems to be that he felt that in two respects his status was very different from that of eleven years before. In the first place, he had won an immense public and could earn at will immense sums. The Betrothed might be labouring heavily, but he had other craft to launch. In the second place he had behind him the monied backer whom he had advised Terry to find, a man of infinite resources who was deeply pledged to his interests. That man was Constable.
[Constable’s Miscellany]
And Constable’s behaviour was calculated to allay Scott’s fears. The great publisher had returned from the south, not in better health but apparently in the best of spirits. For some time he had been fertile in his proposals to Scott — a book on popular superstitions, a collection of the English poets, an edition of Shakespeare — editorial schemes to fill up the novelist’s leisure and prevent too frequent romances from glutting the market. But now he had ampler visions. He realized that the spread of the popular taste for reading must be accompanied by publications at a popular price. At Abbotsford in May he startled Scott and James Ballantyne by declaring in his impressive way that printing and bookselling were only in their infancy, and he had a mass of figures to prove his case. He proposed a new Miscellany, a volume every month, not in boards but in cloth, to be sold at some price like half a crown or three shillings. “If I live for half-a-dozen years,” he said, “I’ll make it as impossible that there should not be a good library in every decent house in Britain as that the shepherd’s ingle-neuk should want the saut-poke! Ay, and what’s that? Why should the ingle-neuk itself want a shelf for the novels? ... I have hitherto been thinking only of the wax lights, but before I’m a twelve-month older I shall have my hand on the tallow.” Scott exclaimed that he was “the grand Napoleon of the realms of print.” “If you outlive me,” said Constable, “I bespeak that line for my tombstone.”
It was a bold conception, and a sound, as Scott had the wit to see. He gladly consented to help this Buonaparte to fight his Marengo. The novels should take their place in the new Miscellany, but there must be other provender than fiction. Scott fired at the idea; to turn his hand to popular history had long been in his mind, and he agreed that he would undertake a life of Napoleon. So when The Betrothed was published in the following month there was an announcement in the introduction which prepared the world for the great venture. That introduction was a pleasant little account of a board meeting of the author of Waverley and some of his principal characters, done in the style of a company report. It concluded thus: —
“The world and you, gentlemen, may think what you please,” said the Chairman, elevating his voice, “but I intend to write the most wonderful book which the world ever read — a book in which every incident shall be incredible, yet strictly true — a work recalling recollections with which the ears of this generation once tingled, and which shall be read by our children with an admiration approaching to incredulity. Such shall be a Life of Napoleon Buonaparte by the Author of Waverley.”
Scott flung himself joyfully into the study of the man who had enchained his imagination and dominated the world of his youth. He was not forgetful of the dangers of writing contemporary history, where, as Raleigh said, if a man follow truth too closely it may haply strike out his teeth, but his purpose was only a sketch on broad lines, to fill four of the duodecimo volumes of the proposed Miscellany. He wrote to his friends for letters and information and to foreign capitals for literature, and presently his little library in Castle Street became like an antiquarian book store. One item was no less than a hundred folio volumes of the Moniteur. This was work which did not require that he should wait for inspiration, and in which his tireless industry could have full play. The preliminary sketch of the French Revolution grew fast, and soon it became clear to Constable that it had outrun the scale which he had planned. It must be issued as a substantive work, and the Miscellany must wait.
[The Talisman]
Meantime the “Tales of the Crusaders” had been published, The Betrothed and The Talisman. Of the first Scott in the writing thought so ill — James Ballantyne heartily assenting — that he wanted to burn it. As it was, he turned to the second, and only completed The Betrothed because his advisers thought that The Talisman would carry it off. It is an indubitable failure, and the reason is plain. The theme — the intricate cross-currents in love made inevitable by the Crusades — might have made a good novel, but the interest would have lain chiefly in its psychology. Scott’s strength did not lie in reading the mind of the remote past but in chronicling its deeds; so he condemned himself to a task outside his interest and beyond his powers. The moral vicissitudes of Eveline and Damian are perfunctorily studied, and there is no swift tale of adventure to atone for their flatness. There was a stirring romance somewhere in the doings of Vidal, but he does not tell it. The siege of the Garde Doloureux, the uncanniness of the Red Finger, and the carrying-off of Eveline do not move us, for the writer’s heart is not in them. The best scene is where the old Constable tests Damian’s honour in the dungeon, but that is spoiled by a hasty and most impotent conclusion. Damian is too much the chronic invalid to be a satisfactory lover, and the villains are too shadowy to convince. Only the Fleming, Wilkin Flammock, has the semblance of life, for he is the type of homespun hero with whom Scott never failed.
It is otherwise with The Talisman. That novel is all book-work, for Scott knew nothing of the East, and not very much of the inner soul of the Crusades. But his imagination fired at the thought of honest English and Scots warriors in the unfamiliar desert, and especially at the tradition of high chivalry attached to the figures of Richard and Saladin. There is much in the tale that is theatrical. The landscape, for example, is so much pasteboard scenery, the secret chapel at Engaddi smacks of the Mysteries of Udolpho, the two dwarfs are no better than Fenella, and the hermit Theodorick is a Gothick monstrosity. But he had devised an excellent plot, a romantic love affair with a background of high politics, and in the latter he showed his old power of giving public matters the interest of tense drama. There is nothing subtle in the delineation of Richard or Saladin or Sir Kenneth of Scotland or the jealous crusading chiefs, but each portrait is adequate for this kind of tale. The best figure is De Vaux, for Tom of the Gills, that “commodity of old iron and Cumberland flint,” was a Borderer, and wi
th him Scott was on his native soil. The book opens brilliantly with the fight beside the desert well, and a dozen scenes stick in the memory — the strife about the banner on St George’s Mount. Kenneth’s vigil and temptation, above all the attempt on Richard’s life by the Assassin of Lebanon, which is a masterpiece of taut, economical narrative. The story “goes twangingly” to its close, and the full-throated speech of the characters is in the right manner. Sir Kenneth defies Richard:—”Now, by the Cross, on which I place my hopes, her name shall be the last word in my mouth, her image the last thought in my mind. Try thy boasted strength on this bare brow, and see if thou canst prevent my purpose.” Richard’s speech to the wavering princes is eloquence of the true heroic brand. The brave stir of the book and its sustained note of ringing gallantry make it more than a mere skilfully constructed pageant, and give it something of the reality of poetry.
[Work on Napoleon]
Napoleon being firmly on the stocks, Scott permitted himself a holiday. In July, accompanied by Lockhart and his daughter Anne, he crossed to Ireland to see his elder son, who was stationed at Dublin. There he was entertained by all the celebrities, saw all the sights, and had the pleasure of visiting Maria Edgeworth at her home. He returned by Holyhead, called on the ladies of Llangollen, at Windermere met Canning (who had promised to visit Abbotsford that year but found that he could not find time to cross the Border) and was entertained to a regatta on the lake, saw Wordsworth at Mount Rydal, and spent two days at Lowther Castle. He reached home in the beginning of September, refreshed by his two months of idleness, and encouraged by the warm popular reception which he had met with everywhere on his travels.
That autumn at Abbotsford he sat tight at his desk. Napoleon proved to be a herculean labour, for the materials were voluminous, and Scott could not enjoy, as he had enjoyed in the case of the novels, the task of swift and easy creation. He was as much a slave of the pen now as he had been when he copied legal documents in his father’s office. Lockhart has described him thus caught in the toils: —
He read and noted and indexed with the pertinacity of some pale compiler in the British Museum; but rose from such employment, not radiant and buoyant, as after he had been feasting himself among the teeming harvests of Fancy, but with an aching brow, and eyes in which the dimness of years had begun to plant some specks before they were subjected again to that straining over small print and difficult manuscript which had, no doubt, been familiar to them in the early time when (in Shortreed’s phrase) “he was making himself.” ... It now often made me sorry to catch a glimpse of him, stooping and poring with his spectacles amidst piles of authorities, a little note-book ready in his left hand, that had always used to be at liberty for patting Maida.
One or two visitors relieved the monotony of his work — Tom Moore, whose warbling amused him, and who in turn was deeply impressed by Scott’s happy relations with his neighbours, and that formidable lady, who had been Harriet Mellon the actress, was now the widow of Mr Coutts the banker, and was about to become Duchess of St Albans. Mrs Coutts was a sort of Mrs Blower in excelsis, a kind-hearted preposterous woman, and Scott exerted himself to see that her feelings were not hurt by his more fastidious guests.
It was a somewhat shadowed autumn. Scott felt the burden of his new historical venture, and he confessed to Moore that he found his imagination in his novels beginning to flag. The pleasant Abbotsford circle was about to break up, for the Lockharts were leaving Scotland. Lockhart, after having failed to become Sheriff of Sutherland, had accepted Murray’s offer to be editor of the Quarterly and adviser in connexion with a projected newspaper, on behalf of which young Mr Disraeli made a visit to Scott that autumn. One reason for his acceptance was the health of Hugh Little John, who, it seemed, could not survive another northern winter. It was a heavy blow to Scott. He agreed that Lockhart should go to London, though he was not altogether happy about his future there, fearing that he might “drop into the gown and slipper garb of life.” But he hated change, he hated to think that now there would be a cold hearth at Chiefswood, and that he would no longer see daily the frail little grandson who was the joy and anxiety of his life.
Many “auld sangs” seemed to be coming to an end, and that year was the last for Scott of the Abbotsford Hunt. He tried to jump the prehistoric trench called the Catrail, but Sibyl Grey came down with him and spoiled for good his nerve for horsemanship. Twenty-one years before he had ridden with Mungo Park, who was on the eve of setting out on the African journey from which he never returned. Park’s horse stumbled, and when Scott observed that it was a bad omen he got the answer: “Freits follow them that fear them.” As he returned to Edinburgh that autumn, a little burdened and saddened, he may have remembered that day on the Yarrow hills, and reflected that there were some omens which could not be averted by courage.
CHAPTER X. — THE DARK DAYS (1825-1826)
On his return to Edinburgh in November 1825 Scott began to keep a journal. He had often regretted his negligence in this respect, as he felt his memory growing weaker, and the sight of some volumes of Byron’s notes suggested that it was not too late to begin a memorandum-book “by throwing aside all pretence to regularity and order, and marking down events just as they occurred to recollection.” After a fortnight’s trial he found that the thing worked well, for it gave him, when he grew sick of a task, a change of work which quieted his conscience. “Never a being, from my infancy up, hated task-work as I hate it.... Propose to me to do one thing, and it is inconceivable the desire I have to do something else.... Now, if I expend such concentric movements on this journal, it will be turning this wretched propensity to some account.” Clearly he intended that no contemporary eye should see it, but he must have contemplated its ultimate publication, for he was a stout believer in keeping records. There may have been another reason for the experiment. In Erskine he had lost his closest friend, and a journal would be an alternative to such a confidant, enabling him to clarify his thoughts and relieve his moods in times which promised a heavy crop of perplexities.
It is fortunate that we possess such a document for the most difficult years of Scott’s life. Its biographical worth is inestimable, and not less high is its quality as literature. For one thing it is one of the most complete expressions of a human soul that we possess, as complete as Swift’s Journal to Stella, but without its self-consciousness. There is no reticence and no posturing, because he is speaking to his own soul; he gives us that very thing in which Hazlitt declared him lacking, “what the heart whispers to itself in secret.” The greatest figure he ever drew is in the Journal, and it is the man Walter Scott. His style, too, is purged of all dross. It is English of no school and of no period, a speech as universal as that of St John’s Gospel. “Whatever else of Scott’s may lose its colour with time,” Professor Elton has written, “the Journal cannot do so, with its accurate, unexaggerated language of pain.” Here are qualities which are found only at long intervals in the romances; a tenderness which keeps watch over man’s mortality and neither quails nor complains, a strange wistfulness, as if a strong and self-contained soul had at last found utterance.
I
[Hurst and Robinson]
In November, before he left Abbotsford, life had been growing anxious. With his keen interest in public affairs he could not be blind to the perilous state of the money-market. Earlier in the year there had been an orgy of speculation, and the new-formed companies, many of them bubble, showed a subscribed capital of some two hundred million pounds. The tide had turned before midsummer, when prices began to fall, and the amount of gold in the Bank of England was reduced by export to a third of what it had been in January. The stock-jobbing mania had extended to the book trade, and eminent publishers had been gambling in South American mining shares, and railways, and gas companies, while Constable’s London correspondents, Hurst and Robinson, were said to have ventured one hundred thousand pounds in hops. Early in October Constable went to London, and found that firm in a troublesome tem
per. They had opposed the inclusion of the Waverley novels in the new Miscellany on the ground that they had still large quantities of the existing editions — indeed they had been very critical of the whole scheme. Moreover, they had been drawing on him for accommodation to an alarming degree. London was nervous and unsettled. The bankers were restricting credit, and there were rumours of many firms on the edge of bankruptcy. Constable realized that at all costs Hurst and Robinson must be supported, and he was a little comforted by the fact that the actual sale of books was better than ever. Both he and his partner Cadell were convinced that their very existence depended on the London house, and every scrap of credit he could raise was put at their disposal. He returned to Scotland early in November, worn out with his labours and anxieties, and collapsed into bed.
Meantime Lockhart, who was in London over the business of the Quarterly, heard disquieting tales, some of them connected with Hurst and Robinson, which he transmitted to Scott. These tales meant more to Scott than to his son-in-law, for he knew how deeply Constable was committed to the London firm, and how deeply he himself was committed to Constable. Lockhart was back in Chiefswood at the end of October, and there he had a letter from a London lawyer which mentioned a report that Constable’s bankers had closed his account—”thrown up his book” as the phrase ran. After dinner he rode over to Abbotsford to give the news to Scott, who received it with equanimity. But next morning Scott turned up to breakfast at Chiefswood, and explained that he had been so perturbed by the story that he had driven by night to Polton to see Constable, and had got from him an unqualified denial. This incident first opened Lockhart’s eyes to the fact that Constable’s downfall might involve his father-in-law in heavier losses than the non-payment of some sums due on the novels. Later Lockhart had further news to give him, gossip about the precarious condition of Hurst and Robinson and their speculation in hops, which he reported in all innocence, not realizing its gravity in Scott’s eyes. On 18th November Scott looked in on Cadell on his way to the Court, and mentioned what he had heard. He seems, also, to have expressed surprise at Constable’s dallying at Polton when things in London were so critical. Cadell tried to reassure him, and wrote at once to Constable, whose gout was not improved by the letter. That evening Cadell called in Castle Street with emphatic denials from Constable, and verified his suspicion that the informant was Lockhart.
