Ragged Lion

by Allan Massie

  THE RAGGED LION

  Allan Massie CBE was born in Singapore in 1938. He is a journalist, columnist, sports writer and novelist. His fiction titles include The Last Peacock, winner of the Frederick Niven Award in 1981, A Question of Loyalties, winner of the Saltire Society/Scotsman Book of the Year, and the widely acclaimed Roman trilogy, Augustus, Tiberius and Caesar. His non-fiction includes Byron’s Travels and a biography of Colette. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he has lived in the Scottish Borders, near Scott’s home at Abbotsford, for the last thirty-five years.

  ‘A brilliant creation . . . Walter Scott shines out of this book as a man of great spirit and nobility . . . For illumination of Scott’s nature and art, The Ragged Lion is splendid’

  David McVey in The Tablet

  ‘There’s real fellow feeling here. He likes and admires Scott. And he has hit on a way of conveying that he was both virtuous and complex, a way of understanding the Wizard of the North and of defending him against detractors’

  Karl Miller in The Scotsman

  ‘A cunning piece of work, as well as an act of homage’

  Victoria Glendinning in The Daily Telegraph

  ‘Outstandingly good on Scott’s relationship with his contemporaries, notably Wordsworth . . . the observations of Byron are dazzling’

  Richard West in The Oldie

  ‘He has captured the spirit of the man in an easy, conversational stytle ideally suited to the approach . . . Massie’s principal triumph is to make his narrator full, rounded and convincing’

  David McVey in New Statesman and Society

  ‘Massie is steeped in Scott’s primary works and catches the turn of his phrase uncannily well’ John Sutherland in The Times Literary Supplement

  ‘Superbly done . . . subtle and engrossing’

  Caroline Moore in The Spectator

  ‘Vivid and illuminating’

  Paul H. Scott in Scotland on Sunday

  ‘Not only a moving exploration of old age, it is also by turns a ghost story and an examination of the Scottish character’

  Ian McIntyre in The Times

  ‘Allan Massie is admirably faithful to the reality of events and has created in his principal character a Scott who rings entirely true’

  Eric Anderson in The Sunday Telegraph

  The Ragged Lion

  A Memoir

  Allan Massie

  First published in Great Britain in 1994 by Hutchinson Ltd.

  This edition published in Great Britain in 2018 by Polygon, an imprint of Birlinn Ltd.

  Birlinn Ltd

  West Newington House

  10 Newington Road

  Edinburgh

  EH9 1QS

  www.polygonbooks.co.uk

  1

  Copyright © Allan Massie, 1994

  The moral right of Allan Massie to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN 978 1 84697 455 7

  eBook ISBN 978 1 78885 079 7

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library.

  Typeset by 3btype.com

  First, for Alison, more than ever;

  then for Judy Steel

  A glossary of Scots words is on page 297.

  Introduction

  In Naples, in 1964, I used to give English conversation lessons to a certain Contessa—. She was – it seemed to me, being then in my youth – an elderly lady, and her English was in fact extremely good, for before the First World War she had had an English, or rather Scots, governess – a Miss MacIvor from Inverness, ‘where, I am told, they speak the best English, or rather the purest’. (So, perhaps, they still did in those days, for many of them were native Gaelic-speakers, and learned English as a second language.) The Contessa complained, however, that she found few opportunities these days to speak English ‘seriously’; she was devoted to literature, and was prepared to pay, quite handsomely, for an hour or two of literary talk. She was indeed far better read than I, not only, as might have been expected, in Italian literature, of which I was indeed utterly ignorant, and in French, of which I had some knowledge, but also, somewhat to my shame, in English literature. Indeed, if she derived some pleasure from conversing on literary topics in English, the advantage was rather mine, not only in financial terms, but because I learned a good deal from her.

  She had a particular devotion to the Waverley novels, of which I had then read only a handful, and to Scott’s poetry which I had not read since prep school days, when Elizabeth Langlands (mother of the girl I later married) took us through Marmion and The Lady of the Lake. The Contessa’s enthusiasm for Scott had first been fired by Miss MacIvor, who believed herself to be descended from Fergus MacIvor, the Highland chieftain in Waverley itself. It may seem odd to claim descent from a fictional character, but, as Graham Greene has since shown in Monsignor Quixote, Miss MacIvor’s case was not unique.

  The Contessa, in the kindest manner, used to reproach me, as a Scot with, already, pretensions to authorship myself, for my ignorance, as she saw it, of Sir Walter’s work.

  ‘Even Peveril of the Peak, which is not a good work, you should read,’ she said. ‘And Quentin Durward – can anything be more intelligent than his portrayal of Louis XI? But of course the greatest novels are the Scotch ones – I think it is not considered correct to say “Scotch” now, am I right?’

  ‘There is a foolish prejudice that it should be restricted to whisky,’ I said, ‘but it was good enough for Sir Walter.’

  ‘And therefore for me,’ she replied, ‘except that I should wish to be up-to-date, and not offend. So let us say “Scots” or “Scottish”. They are sublime. His own favourite, I believe, was Redgauntlet. Yet for a particular reason, which I may tell you some day when we are better acquainted, I have an affection also for Castle Dangerous, the very last one he wrote, when he was so ill, poor man.’

  ‘I must tell you’, she said on a later occasion, ‘that, besides the influence of Miss MacIvor, and my real admiration for Scott’s novels and poetry, I have another peculiar reason for my interest in Sir Walter. You see,’ – she paused, and, if I remember, blushed – ‘his younger son, Charles, when he was attached to the British Embassy here, was a particular friend of my great-grandmother. In fact . . .

  But there, for the time being, she broke off.

  On my next visit, she said:

  ‘You will find this hard to believe, but I possess what is a manuscript of Sir Walter’s. It is not one of the novels, rather a sort of memoir, most peculiar. I should like you to read it. I think you would find it interesting.’

  So a day was fixed, and a time appointed in the late afternoon, and I was settled at a rococo table in the library of her apartment in the family palazzo, before a pile of yellowing manuscript. The hand was not Scott’s – even I could tell that, for it was manifestly Italian.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ she said, ‘it is a copy which I believe Charles Scott presented to my great-grandmother, but read it – you will find it of interest.’

  I obeyed, and indeed found it of some interest. Now, as it happened, I had not then read any biography of Scott, not even a popular one such as Hesketh Pearson’s (which is, by the way, admirable); nor had I read his Journal; nor did I have any knowledge of the bibliography of Scott’s works, nor of the state of Scott scholarship. In short, it never occurred to me that I was reading something which had never been published. No doubt it should have done so; but I was young, somewhat frivolous and, in any case, had lunched rather well. I may even have fallen asleep over my reading.

  I had to leave Naples very soon afterwar
ds, for pressing reasons of no concern now, and, though we exchanged letters for a few years, gradually lost touch with the Contessa. In time I returned to Scotland and slowly made myself into what I am today: a professional author, novelist, journalist, hack, what have you. Over the years I also repaired the deficiencies in my reading of Scott, which the Contessa had deplored, and came to admire him more and more deeply, concluding that he was not only incomparably the greatest Scottish writer – and that his only rival among English novelists is Dickens – but that he was also, if not the greatest Scotsman, which is perhaps a meaningless term, the most thoroughly Scottish of our great men: and I came to agree with Hesketh Pearson who called him ‘the noblest man of letters in history’, and wrote that ‘he was the only person within my knowledge whose greatness as a writer was matched by his goodness as a man’.

  My reverence and affection – no, love – for Scott were enhanced when in 1982 we moved from Edinburgh to the Borders, taking a house in the Yarrow Valley, some half-dozen miles from his beloved Abbotsford. No one, I believe, can come to understand Scott who does not also know Abbotsford, and for the opportunities given me to get to know the house and imbibe its atmosphere, I am profoundly grateful to its present custodians, his great-great-great-granddaughters, Mrs Patricia Maxwell-Scott and Dame Jean Maxwell-Scott.

  Then in 1988 Judy Steel, who was then Director of the Borders Festival, asked me to write a play about Scott. The Minstrel and the Shirra (‘Shirra’ being the Selkirk word for Sheriff, and Scott having been, of course, Sheriff of Selkirkshire) was produced at the Borders Festival the following year, having its first performance appropriately in the Little Theatre made from the old game-larder at Bowhill, one of the seats of the Duke of Buccleuch, chief of the Clan Scott, and then in a revised (and improved) version at the 1991 Edinburgh International Festival, when Robert Paterson gave an uncannily convincing representation of Scott; he later repeated this at a special performance in the library of Abbotsford itself, on what was for me a singularly moving occasion.

  Now, throughout this period I had given little thought to the manuscript which I had perused in somewhat cursory and inadequate fashion in the Contessa’s library a quarter of a century back. Certainly, my memory of it was dim, and, if I thought about it at all, I suppose I assumed that it had been used by Lockhart as material for his monumental biography of his father-in-law.

  Then I received a letter from the Contessa. Though over ninety, she still maintained a lively interest in art and literature, and somehow had learned of The Minstrel and the Shirra. She expressed her delight that at last, as it seemed, I had acquired a proper admiration for Sir Walter, and then continued:

  ‘You will remember that I showed you the manuscript, or rather copy of a manuscript, which Charles Scott gave to my great-grandmother, though I do not think you read it with the due attention it deserved. Nevertheless, now that you have reformed, I intend to leave it to you in my will. It ought to return to Scotland. Moreover, my husband’s nephews, my only surviving family connection, are camorriste, or at least in league with the Camorra.* They have no pride of family, and think of nothing but making money. I have no time for them, and it grieves me to think of how they dishonour their ancestors. My great-grandmother would be horrified if she could see them. Charles Scott entrusted the manuscript to her as to someone he loved and respected, and it should be passed on to someone who will feel the same emotions for it. Besides, it ought now to be published. It never has been, you know. I believe that when you read it, I omitted to give you also the note which Charles Scott himself wrote concerning it. You will find it of the greatest interest. By the way, I read your novel about Vichy France – A Question of Loyalties. Have I the title right? Not bad, not in Sir Walter’s class, naturally, but not bad for this awful century of ours . . .’

  I replied at once. We exchanged a couple of letters. Then she died. There were the usual legal delays. Then eventually in the autumn of 1993 the manuscript arrived.

  This time I read it eagerly, and with a growing astonishment. How, I wondered, could I have been so obtuse in 1964? How could it not have been published? Then it struck me that it must have made a deeper impression on me than I had supposed, for certain passages in The Minstrel and the Shirra echoed others here of which I had retained no conscious memory.

  The question of its authenticity at once arises. Since the manuscript exists only (as I have said) in a copy made by an Italian copyist – though the paper is of the right date – the matter can be resolved only by internal evidence. Certain passages resemble parts of the Journal very closely – often indeed almost word for word; others bear an equally striking resemblance to sentences or paragraphs in Lockhart’s biography. It could therefore be a fabrication made chiefly from these sources. If so, one must wonder what can have been the point of it, since no attempt appears to have been made to profit from it at any time in the last century and a half.

  For my part, I am impressed by the Contessa’s assurance that Charles Scott gave it to her great-grandmother, all the more because I suspect that she believed there was more than affection between them (something at which Charles Scott hints in the last page of his Notes – if indeed they are his – which are here printed as an Afterword). When she said he ‘was a particular friend of my great-grandmother. In fact . . .’ and then broke off, I think she was on the brink of suggesting that there had been an affair, and that she might herself be a descendant of Sir Walter. Modesty, pride of family, stopped her short; which is why I have chosen to conceal her name.

  Yet it must be admitted that there is no record of any other copy of this ‘memoir’. There is none in the Library at Abbotsford where any such would certainly have been uncovered by either the former Librarian, the immensely erudite Dr Corson, or by his equally learned successor, Dr Douglas Gifford, in the all-but-impossible possibility that Dr Corson might have overlooked such a document. Nor can any record of one be traced in the National Library of Scotland, nor in the Library of any university in the United Kingdom or the United States of America, nor in any private collection. There is therefore room for scepticism.

  For my part I find the style and matter convincing. It is not Scott at his best, but then, if it was for the most part written, as Charles Scott avers, in the last year or two of his life, when his health was broken and his intellectual faculties were decaying, that could not be expected. After all, neither Count Robert of Paris nor Castle Dangerous, his last two novels, is Scott at his best; though, having read, and accepted, the memoir, I now understand the Contessa’s respect and admiration for the latter.

  I believe that this is what happened. The manuscript was abandoned, as Charles Scott – let us suppose the author of the note is indeed Charles Scott – reports, in the Casa Bernini in Rome, where Scott had lodged during his few weeks in the city, and was then handed over to Charles as he passed through Rome on his way back to his post in Naples after Sir Walter’s funeral. He had at least one copy made – perhaps two – his intentions remain a little unclear. One copy, or more probably the original manuscript, was sent to Lockhart, who made considerable use of it in compiling his great biography. This would account for the resemblances between Lockhart and the memoir; that is to say, Lockhart drew on the memoir rather than some presumed fabricator – but who? – on Lockhart. As for the resemblances to the Journal, they may be easily dismissed: either Scott used the Journal as a source for the memoir, as Lockhart and all subsequent biographers have used it; or, writing about the same events in a different form, he almost automatically from time to time employed the same words. That is natural enough: we have all done so writing letters to different people about the one event.

  Having used the manuscript, and drawn from it what he wanted, Lockhart then destroyed it. (It is possible, of course, that he merely lost it, but I doubt that; Lockhart was careful with his papers.) I realize this may seem a monstrous charge to bring against a dead man. But there was, of course, an unhappy, and recent, precedent: the burning of
Byron’s memoirs by those who believed they were caring for his reputation (not realizing that in doing so they destroyed their own). Lockhart had a great reverence for his father-in-law, nowhere more clearly indicated than in the pious death-scene he composed for him, which most modern critics judge a fabrication: an account of Scott’s death as it should have been rather than as other evidence suggests it more probably was. There are passages in the memoir which must have pained Lockhart – which must pain any lover of Scott – for they indicate the deep distress and confusion of mind to which, from time to time, he was subjected in his last years. It is likely that Lockhart thought they would do Sir Walter no credit. I consider him mistaken if he indeed thought so. They seem to me to show Scott struggling with the utmost nobility and courage against the horrors to which his weary brain and spirit were subjected. It seems to me also that the contrast between such moments and the many passages of lucid and even sunny authority testifies very fully to his remarkable qualities. But, if Lockhart thought otherwise, and acted accordingly, I impugn his judgement, not his motives.

  Charles Scott, I believe, knew his brother-in-law well, and assessed him correctly, when he wrote that, having taken what was useful to him from the memoir, he would ‘out of a wish to protect my father’s good name of which he is the very jealous guardian’ destroy the manuscript; and I agree with Charles in thinking that view of it ‘quite mistaken’.

  I have only a few notes to add to this already over-long Introduction, but the first of them supplies an additional, personal, reason for my confidence of its authenticity. The reader will find that some curious scenes of a supernatural sort are set in Hastie’s Close, off the Cowgate, in the Old Town of Edinburgh. It so happens that while I was engaged in editing the manuscript – no easy task, for we have to consider an Italian copyist, with perhaps an uncertain command of English, transcribing a manuscript which Charles Scott who knew his father’s hand well had difficulty in reading – so that frequently I have had to hazard a guess at what Scott meant to write (those scholars engaged now on the preparation of the Edinburgh Edition of the Waverley Novels will, I am certain, extend their sympathy to me); it so happens, as I say, that while engaged in this task, I got into conversation with some friends one evening in Edinburgh concerning manifestations of the supernatural in the Old Town; one of those present, a young writer named Saul . . . asked whether I knew anything of Hastie’s Close.