Ragged Lion

by Allan Massie

  Another circumstance accounts for my own attachment to this novel. It so happens that I composed it when I was in the throes of a severe illness which lasted off and on for three years. I suffered periods of intense abdominal pain, and was sometimes so weak that I could scarce sit on a pony, on which indeed I was the very image of Death on the pale horse, lanthorn-jawed, decayed in flesh, stooping as if I meant to eat the pony’s ears, and quite incapable of going above a foot-pace. The pain could only be quelled by copious draughts of laudanum, so that between the pain and the drugs my mind was alternately disordered and befogged. I was quite unable to sit at my desk and hold a pen, and a good part of the novel was dictated to Willie Laidlaw. I was too ill even to correct the proofs myself, and when the bound volumes were put in my hand by James Ballantyne, I opened them with some trepidation for I found that I could not recollect a single incident, character or conversation. It may be imagined with what relief I discovered that the novel made sense, and, what is more peculiar, has some claims to be thought the best-ordered and best-crafted of my works. I know no clearer evidence of the truth of my assertion that the essential work of literary creation derives from some part of the mind to which we do not have conscious access. ‘There’s a divinity that shapes our ends/Rough-hew them how we will.’

  I had recovered my health by Christmas 1819, but apart from that it was a bitter time, for a single week of cruel December weather took from me my dear mother, my uncle Dr Rutherford, and my aunt Christian Rutherford in whose language and conversation I had always delighted. Moreover, shaken by three years of illness and intense industry, I felt myself, though then still on the right side, as the saying goes, of fifty, to be already an old man. My mother had called me ‘Wattie, my wee lamb,’ to her dying days, and perhaps youth must vanish from us when the last of those who have fond memories of our childhood are taken from us. It was sadly affecting, as I sorted through her things, to discover the little preparations she had already made for presents – for the children, friends and dependents – which she had assorted for the New Year – for she was a great observer of the old fashions of her time, when the New Year was the season for gifts – and to think that the kind heart was already cold which delighted in all these acts of love and kindly affection.

  I grow erratic in my course, and this chapter has already stretched out far beyond my original intention. But what of that?

  My mind is no like a Roman road,

  A clear straucht line on the map, see;

  But a gangrel path that winds its way

  Wherever the fancy taks me.

  And I cannot pass on without the reflection that there is perhaps no love as pure, unselfish and steadfast as that of a good mother for her children. I have some sympathy with the Roman Catholic cult of the Virgin Mary which recognizes this, and in which the Virgin is generally presented as the Madonna or the Mother of God.

  When I recovered from those years of illness, I found my energy diminished, and henceforward I was ever more tempted to look back, and to seek happiness in memory rather than expectation. It was in that mood that I wrote my own favourite among my novels: Redgauntlet. It begins as a pastoral. It has the two most engaging, I believe, of my youthful heroes – some would say the only two engaging ones – in Darsie Latimer and Alan Fairford. Some have detected elements of my dear friend Will Clerk in Darsie, and I would not deny their presence, saving only this qualification: that he is also in part a portrait of my own youthful Romantic and impractical self. There is much of me too in Alan, that side of my character which suffered me to submit to the drudgery of my father’s law office (and Alan’s worthy father Saunders Fairford is in part also an affectionate reminiscence of my own dear father). Then though it is a pleasant story of pleasant people (for the most part) and set in pleasant places, it is, I believe, suffused with an agreeable melancholy which derived from the autumn mood in which I wrote it. Indeed where young Darsie is concerned, the story may be held to present to the reader autumn’s memories of spring.

  It deals also with the last flicker of the Jacobite romance, and may be considered to form a triptych with Rob Roy and Waverley.

  If I had written nothing else, I would not feel I had neglected such gifts as the Lord bestowed upon me, if I left behind Redgauntlet, as my sole literary memorial.

  Of the novels made from book-work, I would select only two. Ivanhoe is also in a sense a tribute to my own youth, for it is in reality the elaboration of those tales of chivalry with which John Irving and I used to delight each other as we strode or wandered over Arthur’s Seat. It was a new venture, which pleased the public greatly, and may indeed prove the most enduringly popular of my works. But for me it was in a sense a holiday task, for, though it is confessedly written out of books, the chivalric romances and old chronicles from which I made it were things I had so thoroughly absorbed in many years of delighted reading that they seemed to have become part of myself: so that in a sense Ivanhoe, like the best of the Scotch novels, may be said to have been as much remembered as invented.

  The plot is full of improbabilities, but in this novel more than in any other I took as my guide that question: ‘What is the plot for, save to bring in fine things?’ Some readers have rebuked me for making Ivanhoe marry the admittedly insipid Rowena, rather than Rebecca, whom they have been kind enough to name the most spirited and delightful of my heroines. I have some sympathy. Yet I am enough of a historian to be aware that it was in the highest degree improbable that a noble knight should marry a Jewess; and I consoled myself with the reflection that while Rebecca was spirited and resourceful, poor Rowena was so insipid that if she did not get her man, the poor lass would be left with nothing. So there was a sort of justice to it.

  I have been censured for historical inaccuracies, and admit myself guilty. Ivanhoe is not to be compared with a novel like Old Mortality which I took great pains to make historically accurate. It is Romance, and, if Shakespeare could give Bohemia a sea-coast, I did not see why I should not still have a Saxon landowner in the reign of Cœur de Lion.

  No doubt as scholarship progresses, more inaccuracies will be discovered, and poor Ivanhoe be denounced as a tissue of fancies. The time will come when scholars will undoubtedly know far more about the Middle Ages than I have been able to learn, for true historical scholarship has scarcely penetrated that period. Yet I may boast that I have done things which bring me into a closer kinship with medieval man than a scholar immured in a library may ever attain.

  I have after all ridden in a cavalry troop. I have hunted the fox and the hare, flown a hawk, and speared a salmon. I have employed my own piper and chaplain, and lack only a jester or Fool, though Lockhart, whose tongue is sharper than mine, has been known to observe that certain of my guests at Abbotsford have played that role well enough. Indeed the mention of the dear place prompts me to add that if I have not built a Gothic castle, I have at least built a fine house with some Gothic decoration and appurtenances, and have therein an armoury that any Norman baron might envy.

  My second favourite among the book-work novels is one which has found special favour on the Continent, Quentin Durward. I had long felt a peculiar interest in those periods of History which appear to serve as a bridge between two distinct epochs; and the fifteenth century afforded me an admirable example. It was a time when the principles of chivalry, more honoured admittedly in word than deed, were all but abandoned. These principles, however often flouted, had contrived to moderate the temper and selfishness of a largely unlettered age. Rude and cruel men were disposed by them to act, on occasion at least, more gently than their natures might have urged them to, but in the dark fifteenth century this softening influence was lost, and men acted with an egotism that seemed all too often to deny even the possibility of generosity and self-denial, principles on which the doctrines of chivalry had been founded, and qualities of which this may be said: that if the earth was to be utterly deprived of them, it would be difficult to conceive of the existence of virtue among the ra
ce of mankind.

  No one more completely exemplified the mean and selfish spirit of this new age than Louis XI of France, a man whose history serves to make that instructive work of Machiavelli’s, The Prince, all but redundant. Since Louis was also a man of great ability, possessed of a caustic wit, and at the same time as grossly superstitious as he was free of moral scruple, it seemed to me admirable to put him at the centre of my projected tale. I drew heavily on the incomparable memoirs of Philippe de Commines, but still sought a point of entry. I have ever found that it served well to allow the reader to see an historical character through the eyes of an imaginary one; and since it happened that Louis, in his terror as death approached – though his prayers to innumerable saints demanded apparently their intercession for the prolongation of his life rather than the salvation of his soul – was ready to place his earthly trust only in his bodyguard of Scottish Archers, whose loyalty to their untrustworthy master was in truth no greater than he deserved, I made what I may call the central intelligence of my novel a young Scottish gentleman who sought admission to that guard. Quentin Durward and his love-affair are little more than aids to keep the plot moving, but such strength as the novel has derives, I believe, from my decision to let the cruel and devious monarch be presented to the reader for the most part through the understanding of a young man from a ruder, but more robust and still more honest society.

  But I think I have said enough about my literary productions, a subject which I have always preferred to avoid in conversation. I do not, however, regret this expatiation. Indeed it has eased my mind somewhat. I may say in conclusion that I have never been in the habit of reading over my novels again after they have appeared in book-form, except that, occasionally, when I have found myself stuck, as if in the mire, in the work under construction, I have read a few pages of one of my earlier books, to remind myself that there were always difficulties, and to persuade myself that I had in some manner or other circumvented them.

  I may add, finally, that when engaged on a novel, I endeavoured, as far as possible, to shut the matter out of my mind from the moment I rose from my writing-desk till I woke the following morning, when I would allow myself half an hour or so to dwell on the story, a practice which meant that I came ready to the desk, while the long intermission, or cessation of mental activity on the book in question, allowed the story, I believe, to fructify in that part of the mind which is beyond the reach of conscious thought, but which appears to me to be the seat of the imaginative faculty.

  13

  Of Friends and Family, 1790–1828

  At my age a man must expect to have more friends in the grave than walking the earth. Even so, though, like Macbeth, ‘my way of life/Has fallen into the sere, the yellow life’, I am not bereft of ‘honour, love, obedience, troops of friends’; and if I were to catalogue the troops, the list would be long and do me some honour, I believe. It is consolation now that scarce a one has shown himself colder to me since I fell into difficulties, and my star waned.

  I do not count those who were drawn to me chiefly on account of my celebrity, though some among them have been honest and engaging enough to have entered the ranks of those whom I am proud to name friend. I have been lionized more than sufficiently for the taste of any rational and honourable man; but if I am a lion still, I fear I am now but a ragged one.

  Oh speak not to me of a name great in story

  The days of our youth are the days of our glory.

  If not glory – though there is glory in the boundless ambition and high spirits of youth – then at least it may be said that the friends of our youth ever retain the warmest place in the heart. Any man who attains either success or fame or wealth must wonder whether his friends love him for what he is or for the light which his celebrity shines on them. The friends of our youth stand forth as testimony that we can be loved for ourself alone; and I do not believe I have lost one of those intimates save through death. Will Clerk, Will Erskine, John Skene of Rubislaw, George Cranstoun and Thomas Thomson have been part of my life since I was a youth. We came together as equals, and equals we have remained in friendship, however ‘great in story’ any of us may have become. We shared our youthful hopes and ambitions with each other. We commiserated with each other, and offered sturdy comfort, when love affairs went agley. We rejoiced in each other’s triumphs and lamented each other’s failures. What can one say of a conversation, an endlessly agreeable social intercourse, that has lasted more than thirty years? Only this, I fancy, that it does some credit to us all, and that we should give thanks to the Almighty for his gift of friendship.

  My friendship with James and John Ballantyne went still further back for it was first formed during the months I stayed at my uncle’s place in Kelso. The world would say it was never a friendship of equals, with some reason, certainly, for both James and John were engaged in trade, and, though I was a secret partner in their printing and publishing business, I was also in a sense, I suppose, their employer; since they depended on me to provide them with the greater part of the materials for their business. Yet few have been as true friends to me as James and John, and in few men’s company have I found an equal delight. James has ever been absolutely honest and straightforward with me; I have valued his advice; and if we are now sunk in the same quagmire, well, at least, we are aye thegither, and I have contrived to have James named manager of the printing-works, which are now held by the trustees; and since he is a man of infinite courage, I fancy he will come again.

  Poor John is among the dead; a livelier, wittier, jollier fellow never lived. His only fault was his excessive optimism and his inability to understand his business. He was as lean as James is plump, and full of a nervous vivacity which never failed to lift the cares from my shoulders. You could not be with John and not be merry; and though his inattention to business might exasperate, with John it was a case of ‘soonest met, soonest forgiven’. He found himself in the role of auctioneer, and it was an education to see him cajole a bidder into raising his offer. He was the soul of generosity, and when he died, left me £2,000 for the furnishing of the Library at Abbotsford, and it was not Johnnie’s fault, though agreeably in character, that the dear man had in truth nothing but debts to leave behind him. But even in extremity his vivacity never deserted him, and he spent some time elaborating the best style of the bookshelves which I should install. As for his generosity, I mind a day at his auction-room when his eye was caught by a poor student – of Divinity, I believe – a subject in which Johnnie took but little interest. ‘You look ill,’ he said to the young man. ‘That I am, in body and in mind.’ ‘Come,’ said John, ‘I think I ken the sort of draft that wad dae ye gude’ – and he slipped him a draft for £10, ‘particularly my dear,’ he added, with a wink, ‘if ta’en on an empty stomach.’

  A few days after he was making his plans for the Library at Abbotsford, I stood in the Canongate Kirkyard, and watched them smooth the turfs over Johnnie’s grave. It was a cold grey slatey day, but as we turned away, the sun broke through the clouds over Calton Hill. I remember sighing, and saying to Lockhart who had accompanied me to pay my last respects to my poor Johnnie: ‘I fear there will be less sunshine for me from this day on.’ My fear was justified.

  I have already spoken something of James Hogg; but the subject of this extraordinary man is well-nigh inexhaustible: such a combination of sense and nonsense, rudeness and sensitivity, pride and servility, good humour and vile temper, courage and poltroonery, grace and boorishness, was surely seldom united in one being; like Dryden’s Zimri, he seemed to be ‘not one, but all mankind’s epitome’. He infuriated me often; and yet, like Johnnie, has always demanded, and received, forgiveness. I have bailed him out of the innumerable scrapes into which his rash thoughtlessness has led him. Once, I remarked that a vile sixpenny planet shone on him when he was born, that seemed to condemn everything he attempted to be broken by his own folly. And yet Hogg has a rare genius, which on occasion I have myself unkindly insulted. I once sugge
sted that he should put aside thoughts of supporting himself by a literary career, and concentrate on his farming (though his brother Robert, who is my head shepherd at Abbotsford, has a gey poor opinion of brother Jamie’s capacity as agriculturist or pastoralist; ‘Jamie is clean gyte,’ he says, ‘he doesna ken yin end of a tup frae the tither, or you wad think he didna, gin ye were tae judge him by his inability to tell a gude beast frae a bad yin.’) James was for a time as if mortally offended by my advice, which, of course, he misunderstood. I never intended that he should abstain from poetry – and indeed if he would not die if poetry was taken from him, he would certainly feel sadly diminished – but rather that he should treat poetry and literature as I did, as an activity for leisure moments, and, for the sake of his family and the excellent Mrs Hogg, should bend his efforts to supporting them by the farms which, thanks to the intervention of the Duchess of Buccleuch, he had been leased on very favourable terms. But Jamie was only intermittently a farmer; oddly enough at moments that sometimes did damage to his other ambitions. So for instance, when I obtained him a seat for the Coronation of His Majesty, thinking that he could write a favourable account of the occasion, and perhaps do himself some good with the ministry and even obtain a pension for his efforts, he replied that It was verra kind o ye, Scott, but the thing canna be done.’ Unfortunately – and he dwelled some time on the grievous misfortune it was – they had fixed the Coronation for the same day as St Boswells Fair, and, since he had only just taken over the farm of Mountbenger, which was not yet stocked, folks would think him out of his wits if he went gallivanting off to London instead of completing the stocking of his farm. And nothing I could say could move him, though it was not many months later that he was deeving me with the demand, ‘Can ye no dae something for me, Scott, wi the ministry? Ye ken I’m as gude a Tory as ye are yoursel.’