Front matter (continued 5)

The existence of a New Town soon forced on the opening up of the city by adequate routes of access. The narrow, steep, and crooked 'wynds' of the Old Town had been constructed in the days when to keep enemies out was the first, indeed the only consideration. Now it became a primary necessity to provide broad, open, and convenient approaches from all sides. The citizens soon enjoyed the privilege of issuing by wide and pleasant highways, conducting to the open fields. And fortunately the buildings now erected beside these spacious approaches were not dominated by the 'Plan.' Cockburn himself considered the buildings 'very respectable; the owners being always tempted to allure the spreading population by laying out their land attractively. Hence Newington, Leith Walk, the grounds of Inverleith, the road to Corstorphine, and to Queensferry, and indeed all the modern approaches, which lead in every direction through most comfortable suburbs.'

It is clear from Lord Cockburn's invaluable testimony that the idea of the more free and daring attempts in architecture, which have now given the New Town a character so different from its 'planned' uniformity and elegance, originated immediately after the peace. 'The influence of these circumstances can only be appreciated by those who knew Edinburgh during the war. It is they alone who can see the beauty of the bravery which the Queen of the North has since been putting on. There were more schemes, and pamphlets, and discussions, and anxiety about the improvement of our edifices and prospects within ten years after the war ceased, than throughout the whole of the preceding one hundred and fifty years.'

Suburban Edinburgh of to-day rejoices in a profusion of trees. Had the same taste been predominant at this period, how different even the centre of the city might have been. It is tantalising to imagine the pictures left us of what existed in those bygone days. 'There was no Scotch city more strikingly graced by individual trees and by groups of them than Edinburgh, since I knew it, used to be. How well the ridge of the Old Town was set off by a bank of elms that ran along the front of James' Court, and stretched eastward over the ground now partly occupied by the Bank of Scotland. Some very respectable trees might have been spared to grace the Episcopal Chapel of St. Paul in York Place. There was one large tree near its east end which was so well placed that some people conjectured it was on its account that the Chapel was set down there. I was at a consultation in John Clerk's house, hard by, when that tree was cut. On hearing that it was actually down we ran out, and well did John curse the Huns. The old aristocratic gardens of the Canongate were crowded with trees, and with good ones. There were several on the Calton Hill; seven, not ill-grown, on its very summit. And all Leith Walk and Lauriston, including the ground round Heriot's Hospital, was fully set with wood. A group was felled about the year 1826 which stood to the west of St. John's Chapel, on the opposite side of the Lothian Road, and formed a beautiful termination of all the streets which join near that point. Moray Place, in the same way, might have been richly decorated with old and respectable trees. But they were all murdered.... I tried to save a very picturesque group, some of which waved over the wall at the west end of the jail on the Calton Hill. I succeeded with two trees; but in about four years they also disappeared. The sad truth is that the extinction of foliage, and the unbroken display of their bright freestone, is of itself a first object with both our masons and their employers. The wooded gardens that we have recently acquired are not inconsistent with this statement. There was no competition between them and building. It is our horror of the direct combination of trees with masonry, and our incapacity to effect it, that I complain of. No apology is thought necessary for murdering a tree; many for preserving it.'

CHAPTER LI

The 'Jury Court'—Chief-Commissioner Adam—His Work and Success—Friendship with Scott—Character of Adam by Scott—The Blairadam Club—Anecdotes—Death of Lord Adam.

Trial by jury in civil cases was introduced into Scotland by an enactment of the year 1815. The first case was tried on 22nd January 1816. The change thus inaugurated was considered by reformers 'one of the most important events in the progress of our law.' Though meeting with strong opposition, headed by the old judges, the introduction of the new system was managed successfully. It implied the arrangement of a separate court, and the appointment of a special presiding judge trained to English practice. The Lord Chief-Commissioner was the Right Hon. William Adam, of Blairadam, and he was assisted by two other judges, Lords Pitmilly and Meadowbank. Adam was then sixty-five years of age. Cockburn says that he was handicapped by extravagant expectations of what he was to do. He describes him as 'the person who had first fought Fox, and then been his friend; who had spoken in debate with Pitt; managed the affairs of Royal Dukes; been the standing counsel of such clients as the East India Company and the Bank of England, and in great practice in Parliamentary Committees.' His appearance was that of a farming gentleman. He had a clear distinct voice, and an admirable manner, but his great defect is said to have been 'obscurity of judicial speech.' Lord Glenlee, listening for a long time, without getting any definite idea, to his well-sounding sentences full of confusion, made the epigram, 'He speaks as if he were an Act of Parliament.'

We have the testimony of Lord Cockburn to the success of his work. 'No other man could have done his work. He had to guide a vessel over shoals and among rocks. This was his special duty, and he did it admirably. He protected his court from prejudices which, if not subdued by his patience and dexterity, would have crushed it any week. So far as we are to retain civil trial by jury in this country, we shall owe it to him personally. When in 1830 the Jury Court ceased to exist as a separate court his vocation was at an end; and he retired with the respect and the affection of the whole legal profession and of the public.'

Such was the task of the man with whom Scott was now to be connected during the rest of his life in a constant interchange of hospitality, and whom he so frequently mentions in his Journal with epithets of esteem and respect. Their acquaintance practically dated from Adam's appointment, but soon grew into the closest friendship. The account of their connection in the Journal (January 1826) must be quoted for the vivid, almost startling light it throws on Scott's own peculiarities.

'I have taken kindly to him as one of the most pleasant, kind-hearted, benevolent, and pleasing men I have ever known. It is high treason among the Tories to express regard for him, or respect for the Jury Court in which he presides. I was against that experiment as much as any one. But it is an experiment, and the establishment (which the fools will not perceive) is the only thing which I see likely to give some prospects of ambition to our Bar. As for the Chief-Commissioner, I dare say he jobs, as all other people of consequence do, in elections, and so forth. But he is the personal friend of the King, and the decided enemy of whatever strikes at the constitutional rights of the monarch. Besides, I love him for the various changes which he has endured through life, and which have been so great as to make him entitled to be regarded in one point of view as the most fortunate—in the other, the most unfortunate—man in the world. He has gained and lost two fortunes by the same good luck, and the same rash confidence, which raised, and now threatens, my peculium. And his quiet, honourable, and generous submission under circumstances more painful than mine,—for the loss of world's wealth was to him aggravated by the death of his youngest and darling son in the West Indies—furnished me at the time and now with a noble example. So the Tories and Whigs may go be d—d together, as names that have disturbed old Scotland, and torn asunder the most kindly feelings since the first day they were invented.... I cannot permit that strife to "mix its waters with my daily meal," those waters of bitterness which poison all mutual love and confidence betwixt the well-disposed on either side.'

Adam was fond of society, in which 'nothing could exceed his delightfulness.' The Blairadam Club was for many years (from 1818 onwards) an institution. It was an annual gathering at midsummer of a few bosom friends, among them Scott, William Clerk, and Sir Adam Ferguson. The friends spent a day or two together, and generally made it a gay and happy occasion. 'We hire a light coach-and-four, and scour the country in every direction in quest of objects of curiosity.' The last meeting attended by Scott was in 1830, when he says: 'Our meeting was cordial, but our numbers diminished. Will Clerk has a bad cold, Thomas Thomson is detained, but the Chief-Commissioner, Admiral Adam (son of the host), Sir Adam, John Thomson and I, make an excellent concert. The day was execrable (wet). But Sir Adam was in high fooling, and we had an amazing deal of laughing.' It is pathetic, in the midst of this, to see how he fretted to be at home, in order to be at work again. In the Journal we come across some remarks or anecdotes of Adam's, of which one or two may be given. 'I came home with Lord Chief-Commissioner Adam. He told me a dictum of old Sir Gilbert Elliot, speaking of his uncles. "No chance of opulence," he said, "is worth the risk of a competence." It was not the thought of a great man, but perhaps that of a wise one.'

Again, 'Dined with Chief-Commissioner,—Admiral Adam, W. Clerk, Thomson and I. The excellent old man was cheerful at intervals—at times sad, as was natural. A good blunder he told us, occurred in the Annandale case, which was a question partly of domicile. It was proved that leaving Lochwood, the Earl had given up his kain and carriages; this an English counsel contended was the best of all possible proofs that the noble Earl designed an absolute change of residence, since he laid aside his walking-stick and his coach.'[1]

[1] Kain in Scots Law means 'payment in kind': carriages, 'services in driving with horse and cart.'

Lockhart has recorded that 'this most amiable and venerable gentleman, my dear and kind friend, died at Edinburgh, on the 17th February 1839, in the eighty-ninth year of his age. He retained his strong mental faculties in their perfect vigour to the last days of his long life, and with them all the warmth of social feelings which had endeared him to all who were so happy as to have any opportunity of knowing him.'

CHAPTER LII

1816—The Antiquary—Death of Major John Scott—The Aged Mother—Buying Land—The Ballantynes—The Black Dwarf and Blackwood—Scott and a Judgeship—Anecdote of Authorship of Waverley.

The year 1816, says Lockhart, 'has almost its only traces in the successive appearance of nine volumes, which attest the prodigal genius and hardly less astonishing industry' of Walter Scott. Among these were the Antiquary and Old Mortality. The former appeared in the beginning of May, and about the same time occurred the death of the author's brother, Major John Scott, who had long been in weak health. Writing to Morritt on this occasion Scott says, 'It is a heavy consideration to have lost the last but one who was interested in our early domestic life, our habits of boyhood, and our first friends and connexions. It makes one look about and see how the scene has changed around him, and how he himself has been changed with it. My mother, now upwards of eighty, has now only one child left to her out of thirteen whom she had borne. She is a most excellent woman, possessed, even at her advanced age, of all the force of mind and sense of duty which have carried her through so many domestic griefs, as the successive deaths of eleven children, some of them come to men and women's estate, naturally infers. She is the principal subject of my attention at present, and is, I am glad to say, perfectly well in body and composed in mind.'

In the same letter he speaks of the Antiquary as being 'not so interesting' as its predecessors, but more fortunate than any of them in the sale, six thousand copies having gone off in a week. Meantime he was fast purchasing land to add to his estate. By this time it had grown from 150 acres to nearly a thousand. There were signs that might have warned him to be careful. At the time of James Ballantyne's fall he appears to have been owing over £3000 to Scott of personal debt. But Scott was sanguine by nature, and it was the interest of the Ballantynes to keep their businesses going. 'Therefore, in a word' (this is Lockhart's deliberate charge), 'John appears to have systematically disguised from Scott the extent to which the whole Ballantyne concern had been sustained by Constable—especially during his Hebridean tour of 1814, and his Continental one of 1815—and prompted and enforced the idea of trying other booksellers from time to time, instead of adhering to Constable, merely for the selfish purposes—first of facilitating the immediate discount of bills;—secondly, of further perplexing Scott's affairs, the entire disentanglement of which would have been, as he fancied, prejudicial to his own personal importance.'

It was in this way that the Tales of my Landlord (that is, the Black Dwarf and Old Mortality) came to be published by Murray and Blackwood. The latter, alarmed by Gifford's disapprobation of the Black Dwarf, proposed that if the author would recast the later chapters, he would gladly take upon himself the expense of cancelling the sheets. Scott's reply, in a letter to Ballantyne, was emphatic: 'Tell him and his coadjutor that I belong to the Black Hussars of Literature, who neither give nor receive quarter. I'll be cursed, but this is the most impudent proposal that ever was made.'

An interesting fact in Scott's personal history which had previously been unknown even to Lockhart, was discovered by the latter when Scott's letters to the Duke of Buccleuch came into his hands after the death of the Duke. During the winter of 1816-1817, it appears, Scott made an attempt to exchange his Clerkship for a seat on the Bench of the Court of Exchequer. The Duke was naturally most anxious to second the proposal, but private reasons prevented him from exercising his influence at that juncture. This seems to have set the matter at rest. In later years, when such a step was suggested, Scott seems to have become convinced that the less conspicuous position was more fit and desirable for a literary man, and more especially a poet and novelist. At all events the Tory party lost the opportunity of making Walter Scott 'Lord Abbotsford.'

After the publication of Tales of my Landlord by Murray, Scott, in conjunction with his friend Erskine, contributed to the Quarterly a general review of the Waverley Novels and a reply to Dr. M'Crie's strictures on the treatment of the Covenanters in Old Mortality. The criticisms were the work of Erskine, though Scott was severely censured after, as if he had been puffing his own works unfairly. The paper closed with an allusion to the report of Thomas Scott's being the author of Waverley. 'A better joke,' says Lockhart, 'was never penned, and I think it includes a confession over which a misanthrope might have chuckled.' This is the conclusion: 'We intended here to conclude this long article, when a strong report reached us of certain Transatlantic confessions, which, if genuine (though of this we know nothing), assign a different author to these volumes than the party suspected by our Scottish correspondents. Yet a critic may be excused seizing upon the nearest suspicious person, on the principle happily expressed by Claverhouse in a letter to the Earl of Linlithgow. He had been, it seems, in search of a gifted weaver, who used to hold forth at conventicles: "I sent for the webster (weaver), they brought in his brother for him; though he, may be, cannot preach like his brother, I doubt not but he is as well-principled as he, wherefore I thought it would be no great fault to give him the trouble to go to jail with the rest."'

At this point we shall cease to attempt any detailed account of the various novels and their publication. Our plan calls now only for a few striking scenes in the closing years of the life whose outward surroundings and personal environment in Edinburgh it is our main aim to illustrate. We may, however, conclude this chapter with the admirable summary by Lockhart of the qualities of Old Mortality, a work which was the product of Scott's greatest intellectual effort, and which is usually, and justly, ranked with Guy Mannering as one of the best of the Scotch Novels. 'The story,' he says, 'is framed with a deeper skill than any of the preceding novels; the canvas is a broader one; the characters are contrasted and projected with a power and felicity which neither he nor any other master ever surpassed; and notwithstanding all that has been urged against him as a disparager of the Covenanters, it is to me very doubtful whether the inspiration of romantic chivalry ever prompted him to nobler emotions than he has lavished on the reanimation of their stern and solemn enthusiasm. The work has always appeared to me the Marmion of his novels.'

CHAPTER LIII

1817—Overwork and Illness—Kemble's 'Farewell Address'—The Kemble Dinner—Blackwood's Magazine and the Reign of Terror in Edinburgh.

During the times of trouble with the Ballantyne affairs, Scott, as has been seen, taxed his strength to an extraordinary and dangerous extent. The effects were presently felt in that which was the permanently weak point of his physical constitution—the family tendency to paralysis. His first serious illness was in March 1817. From his letters to Morritt it appears that he had suffered all through the winter—while working as usual in Edinburgh—with cramps in the stomach. He had got temporary relief by means of drinking scalding water, but as the pains continued to recur more frequently he had been obliged reluctantly to have recourse to Dr. Baillie. 'But' (he says) 'before his answer arrived, on the 5th, I had a most violent attack, which broke up a small party at my house, and sent me to bed roaring like a bull-calf. All sorts of remedies were applied, as in the case of Gil Blas' pretended colic, but such was the pain of the real disorder, that it out-deviled the Doctor hollow. Even heated salt, which was applied in such a state that it burned my shirt to rags, I hardly felt when clapped to my stomach. At length the symptoms became inflammatory, and dangerously so, the seat being the diaphragm. They only gave way to very profuse bleeding and blistering, which, under higher assistance, saved my life. My recovery was slow and tedious from the state of exhaustion. I could neither stir for weakness and giddiness, nor read for dazzling in my eyes, nor listen for a whizzing sound in my ears, nor even think for lack of the power of arranging my ideas. So I had a comfortless time of it for about a week.' Lockhart adds that his friends in Edinburgh were in great anxiety about him all the spring, the attacks being more than once repeated. But he resumed work almost immediately, planning out, in intervals of pain, the drama called The Doom of Devorgoil. Now also he wrote the magnificent 'Farewell Address,' instinct with heart-felt pathos, with which his friend John Philip Kemble took his leave of the Edinburgh stage, on the evening of Saturday the 29th March 1817. The character in which Kemble had appeared was Macbeth, and he wore the dress of the character while he spoke the lines. 'Mr. Kemble' (says James Ballantyne) 'delivered these lines with exquisite beauty, and with an effect that was evidenced by the tears and sobs of many of the audience. His own emotions were very conspicuous. When his farewell was closed, he lingered long on the stage, as if unable to retire. The house again stood up, and cheered him with the waving of hats and long shouts of applause. At length he finally retired, and, in so far as regards Scotland, the curtain dropped upon his professional life for ever.'

'My last part is played, my knell is rung,

When e'en your praise falls faltering from my tongue;

And all that you can hear, or I can tell,

Is Friends and patrons, hail, and Fare you well!'

A few days after, the great tragedian was entertained to dinner by his Edinburgh admirers. There was a company of about seventy notable persons—among them Lockhart, who says, 'I was never present at any public dinner in all its circumstances more impressive.' Jeffrey was chairman, and the croupiers were Walter Scott and John Wilson. From the Life of Jeffrey we extract a curious anecdote of this interesting scene. That evening Jeffrey 'did what he never did before or since. He stuck a speech. He had to make the address and present a snuff-box to Kemble. He began very promisingly, but got confused, and amazed both himself and everybody else, by actually sitting down and leaving the speech unfinished; and, until reminded of that part of his duty, not even thrusting the box into the hand of the intended receiver. He afterwards told me the reason of this. He had not premeditated the scene, and thought he had nothing to do, except in the name of the company to give the box. But as soon as he rose to do this, Kemble, who was beside him, rose also, and with most formidable dignity. This forced Jeffrey to look up to his man; when he found himself annihilated by the tall tragic god; who sank him to the earth at every compliment, by obeisances of overwhelming grace and stateliness.' The incident must have been awkward for Kemble, but it was a genuine and involuntary tribute to the majestic bearing of the great actor.

Shortly after this, in April 1817, there occurred an event which greatly stirred the peaceful waters of Edinburgh social and literary life, and with which Scott's future son-in-law and biographer, John Gibson Lockhart, was to be very prominently associated. This was the founding of the Edinburgh Monthly Magazine. The publisher was John Blackwood. Wishing to develop the magazine on lines of his own, this far-seeing and able gentleman, first shaking himself clear from the two editorial personages who were hampering his energies, started the periodical afresh at the seventh number under the title of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine. The famous No. VII. came like a thunderbolt. All the world wondered. From what sources had Blackwood evoked the wit, the tremendous energy, the boundless audacity of personal attack which at once shocked and delighted the public mind? The Whigs were both tortured and alarmed. The days of their sole literary domination were seen straightway to be over. For them especially a Reign of Terror had begun. They were now to be subjected to the lash of an incomparable, though often excessive, power of ridicule: a form of punishment which always hurts most sorely those to whom the saving grace of humour has been denied. Necessarily Blackwood's Magazine was a political engine, the organ of high Toryism. As such, it was liable to the sneer of Cockburn (a sneer which tells with equal justness against all theoretical defenders of current politics): 'In this department it has adhered with respectable constancy to all the follies it was meant to defend. It is a great depository of exploded principles; and indeed it will soon be valuable as a museum of old errors.' But every device of mystification, an example set by Scott, was employed to keep the secret of who were really 'Blackwood's young Tory wags,' and this was further secured by the entirely unsuspected fact, that the editor was actually Blackwood himself. The marvellous thing, now that the facts are known, is the enormous share performed by the two chiefs, Lockhart and Wilson. In their buoyant eagerness to break up the monopoly of Whig literary and political influence, they doubtless went too far, and sometimes knew it. Later on, these early defects were acknowledged and analysed, in Peter's Letters, by the authors themselves. Even they, it may be, hardly realised how much pain they had given, but the almost solemn words of Lord Cockburn indicate very clearly how intense it must have been. 'Posterity,' he says, 'can never be made to feel the surprise and just offence with which, till we were hardened to it, this work was received. The minute circumstances which impart freshness to slander soon evaporate; and the arrows that fester in living reputations and in beating hearts are pointless, or invisible to the eyes of those who search for them afterwards as curiosities.' It was, in fact, the work of young and inexperienced men brimful of genius and spirit, but untaught to discern the dangers in the use of the weapons with which they played.

CHAPTER LIV

Personal Anecdotes of Scott—Washington Irving—The Minister's Daughter—J. G. Lockhart—His Introduction to Scott—Annual Register—39 Castle Street—Scott's 'Den'—Animal Favourites.

In the autumn of 1817 Washington Irving, with whose History of New York by Knickerbocker Scott had been greatly charmed, paid a visit to Abbotsford, and received a hearty welcome. One of the anecdotes told by Irving of this visit may be given here, as illustrating the beautiful courtesy and fine sympathetic feeling with which it was Scott's nature to treat sterling worth and generosity of mind in whatever rank he discovered it. Irving tells how William Laidlaw and his wife came to dinner one day, accompanied by a lady friend. He observed with some curiosity that this by no means extraordinary person, who was middle-aged and only remarkable for her intellectual qualities, was treated by their host with particular attention and courtesy. The occasion was in fact a specially pleasant one, and the company were made to feel that they were cherished guests. On their leaving, Scott, to Irving's great delight, launched into hearty praise of the lady visitor. The daughter of a Scottish minister, who died in debt, she had been left an orphan and destitute. She had at once faced the situation with a brave heart, and though her education was not great, she set up a school for young children, which soon proved in its way a success. But she made her own concerns a secondary object. By submitting to all sorts of privation, she managed to pay off all her father's debts, determined that no slighting word or evil feeling might humble his memory. And this was not all. To the martyr's self-sacrifice she added a divine benevolence. To some who once had been kind to her father and were now fallen on evil days, she did all the service she could by teaching their little ones without reward or fee. Happily her memory is green in the eulogy of the great neighbour to whom she was a kindred spirit: 'She's a fine old Scotch girl, and I delight in her more than in many a fine lady I have known, and I have known many of the finest.'

It was in the following year, in May 1818, that John Gibson Lockhart, then a young barrister with pronounced literary leanings, was first introduced to Scott. It was the moment when, as the great biographer himself has eloquently put it, 'Scott's position was, take it for all in all, what no other man had ever won for himself by the pen alone. His works were the daily food, not only of his countrymen, but of all educated Europe. His society was courted by whatever England could show of eminence. Station, power, wealth, beauty, and genius, strove with each other in every demonstration of respect and worship, and—a few political fanatics and envious poetasters apart—wherever he appeared in town or country, whoever had Scotch blood in him, "gentle or simple," felt it move more rapidly through his veins when he was in the presence of Scott.' But in the midst of this blaze of glory, and while he was dreaming dreams of fortune and family pride, what was it that struck the most keen-eyed of critics when he first saw his hero? Only the plain easy modesty, the kindness of heart which pervaded every word, tone, and gesture, the simple qualities which made him 'loved more and more' by his earliest friends. It was at the house of Mr. Home Drummond, a grandson of Lord Kames, that the meeting took place. Like every other literary aspirant, Lockhart was astonished and gratified by the cordiality and kindly appreciation of the elder writer. 'When the ladies' (he says) 'retired from the dinner-table, I happened to sit next him; and he, having heard that I had lately returned from a tour in Germany, made that country and its recent literature the subject of some conversation. In the course of it, I told him that when, on reaching the inn at Weimar, I asked the waiter whether Goethe was then in the town, the man stared as if he had not heard the name before; and that, on my repeating the question, adding Goethe der grosse Dichter, he shook his head as doubtfully as before—until the landlord solved our difficulties, by suggesting that perhaps the traveller might mean "Herr Geheimer-Rath (Privy Councillor) von Goethe."—Scott seemed amused with this and said, "I hope you will come one of these days and see me at Abbotsford; and when you reach Selkirk or Melrose, be sure you ask even the landlady for nobody but the Sheriff." I mentioned how much any one must be struck with the majestic beauty of Goethe's countenance—the noblest certainly by far that I have ever yet seen—"Well," said he, "the grandest demi-god I ever saw was Dr. Carlyle, minister of Musselburgh, commonly called Jupiter Carlyle, from having sat more than once for the king of gods and men to Gavin Hamilton—and a shrewd, clever old carle was he, no doubt, but no more a poet than his precentor. As for poets, I have seen, I believe, all the best of our own time and country—and though Burns had the most glorious eyes imaginable, I never thought any of them would come up to an artist's notion of the character, except Byron."'

Soon after this Lockhart was, on Scott's recommendation, invited by the Ballantynes to take Scott's place in working up the historical part of their Annual Register. Thus they met pretty frequently during the ensuing summer session, a circumstance to which we owe Lockhart's very complete and first-hand description of Scott's working 'den' at 39 Castle Street and of his social life at this period. The den was a small square back-room behind the dining parlour. It looked out upon a dull back-yard with a small square of turf. The walls of the room were lined with books, mostly stately folios and quartos beautifully kept, as befitted a lover of books. There was one massive table, on which was his own desk, and one opposite for an occasional amanuensis. On the top lay his law papers, while his MSS., letters, and proof-sheets were under his hand on the desk below. Before the desk stood his large elbow-chair, and there were only two other chairs in the room. Beside the window was a pile of green tin boxes, on the top of which was a fox's tail mounted on a handle of old silver and used for dusting the top of a book as occasion required. He had a ladder for scaling the high shelves, which is described as 'low, broad, well carpeted, and strongly guarded with oaken rails.' His living companions in his den were usually a venerable tom-cat called Hinse, which had a liking for the top of the ladder, and the noble stag-hound Maida, whose lair was on the hearth-rug. 'I venture to say' (Lockhart remarks) 'that Scott was never five minutes in any room before the little pets of the family, whether dumb or lisping, had found out his kindness for all their generation.'

In conversation among his friends, Scott was always natural, sensible, and good-humoured. His ideal society, as we have seen, was the simple but high-toned friendliness, with courtly attention to old manners and customs of the social board—the ways of the old-fashioned generation before 1800, when Edinburgh society still took its tone from the Scottish aristocracy and gentry. After this period Edinburgh table-talk and manners were led by the lawyers. Men shone in society by contests of dialectics, brilliant disquisitions, 'such as might be transferred without alteration to the pages of a critical review.' Scott was of another world from this. He admired the dexterity and skill displayed, but he was not tempted to take part. It lacked the touch of nature which would have made him acknowledge kin. So everybody else was satisfied, and Scott was not displeased. The great poet, the writer of conversations which had heightened the gaiety of millions, was perfectly content to be considered inferior as a table-companion to 'this or that master of luminous dissertation or quick rejoinder, who now sleeps as forgotten as his grandmother.' To appreciate, it is necessary to know something and to sympathise. The persons who called Scott's conversation 'common-place' were practically comparing the Waverley Novels to Dugald Stewart's lectures, and would have denounced Shakespeare for making up his Hamlet out of popular quotations. It was 'ignorance, madam, pure ignorance,' without the wit to acknowledge, and in many cases political prejudice was also present. To one of the latter Lockhart heard Lord Cockburn nobly reply: 'I have the misfortune to think differently from you; in my humble opinion, Walter Scott's sense is a still more wonderful thing than his genius.' Nothing could be better: a noble and excellent saying. And to similar effect in his Memorials he testifies that scarcely even in his novels was Scott more striking or delightful than in society; where his halting limb, the bur in the throat, the heavy cheeks, the high Goldsmith-forehead, the unkempt locks, and general plainness of appearance, with the Scotch accent and stories and sayings, all graced by gaiety, simplicity, and kindness, made a combination most worthy of being enjoyed.

CHAPTER LV

Scotland Edinburgh Society—Lockhart's Opinion—Scott's Drives in Edinburgh—Love of Antiquities—The Sunday Dinners at 39 Castle Street—The Maclean Clephanes—Erskine, Clerk, C. K. Sharpe, Sir A. Boswell, W. Allan,—Favourite Dishes.

Ignorant prejudice gradually disappeared. The charm of Scott's conversation was found to be as great, in fact the same, as that of his writings. Mingling with and wishing to emulate London society, Edinburgh great folks came to understand that social intercourse ought to aim at enjoyment and relaxation, not at the display of alleged wit and amateur disquisitions on speculative themes. Then they discovered that Scott's easy, natural humour, his ever-ready and picturesque descriptions, his quaint old-world sayings and diverting sketches and anecdotes, nay, his very prejudices, always honest and so very lovable when understood to their foundation, were unique treasures even from the narrowest point of view. This was what all, long before 1818, recognised whose opinion was worth considering. But Lockhart, who had the best means of knowing, as being himself 'one of them,' says that even then the old theory, that Scott's conversation was 'commonplace,' lingered on in the general opinion of the city, especially among the smart praters of the Outer House. Of course it was the cue of these praters to differ from their elders, and few of them, after all, had perhaps enjoyed what they made a boast of affecting to depreciate. Lockhart, who was certainly in the Whig sense the strongest intellect that ever adorned Edinburgh, both enjoyed and appreciated. And fortunately for us minores, he has told what he saw and rejoiced in. He says: 'It was impossible to listen to Scott's oral narrations, whether gay or serious, or to the felicitous fun with which he parried absurdities of all sorts, without discovering better qualities in his talk than wit—and of a higher order; I mean especially a power of vivid painting—the true and primary sense of what is called Imagination. He was like Jacques—though not a "Melancholy Jacques"; and "moralised" a common topic into a "thousand similitudes." Shakespeare and the banished Duke would have found him "full of matter." He disliked mere disquisitions in Edinburgh, and prepared impromptus in London; and puzzled the promoters of such things sometimes by placid silence, sometimes by broad merriment. To such men he seemed common-place—not so to the most dexterous masters in what was to some of them almost a science; not so to Rose, Hallam, Moore, or Rogers,—to Ellis, Mackintosh, Croker, or Canning.'

When in Edinburgh, Scott's only formal outing was an afternoon drive in an open carriage, sometimes to Blackford Hill, or Ravelston, and so home by Corstorphine, sometimes to Portobello, keeping as close as possible to the sea. An old man who died last year (1905) used to tell how, when he was a boy, he remembered Scott alighting and coming some distance across a field to speak a few kind words to him and ask after his parents, in whom he took an interest. When he went home, his mother told him about the great man and bade her son remember that day, for if he lived to be an old man, he would be proud to talk of it to his children's children. As he drove through the city, it was Scott's greatest enjoyment to gaze and muse upon its natural beauties, and especially its remaining antiquities. He would often make a long circuit in order, as Lockhart observed, 'to spend a few minutes on the vacant esplanade of Holyrood, or under the darkest shadows of the Castle rock, where it overhangs the Grassmarket, and the huge slab that still marks where the gibbet of Porteous and the Covenanters had its station. His coachman knew him too well to move at a Jehu's pace amidst such scenes as these. No funeral hearse crept more leisurely than did his landau up the Canongate or the Cowgate; and not a queer tottering gable but recalled to him some long-buried memory of splendour or bloodshed, which, by a few words, he set before the hearer in the reality of life. His image is so associated in my mind with the antiquities of his native place, that I cannot now revisit them without feeling as if I were treading on his gravestone.'

But of all pleasant memories of the Master well-beloved, the most delightful to conjure up is that of the good Clerk as host at the Sunday 'dinner without the silver dishes,' as he was wont to call it. It was always a gathering of dear and long-cherished friends. All were delighted to meet, and all were prepared to be happy. Gladdest of all was their host, who came into the room 'rubbing his hands, his face bright and gleesome, like a boy arriving at home for the holidays, his Peppers and Mustards gambolling about his heels, and even the stately Maida grinning and wagging his tail in sympathy.' Most of the intimates who came to these parties have already been mentioned. There was Mrs. Maclean Clephane, with whom Scott would playfully dispute on the subject of Ossian. Her daughters would accompany her, to delight all, especially Scott, with the poetry and music of their native isles. They had made him their guardian by their own choice, and were loved for their own sakes. The eldest was that Lady Crompton with whom, as he tells in the Journal, he travelled to Glasgow in September 1827, and had 'as pleasant a journey as the kindness, wit, and accomplishments of my companion could make it.' When they reached Glasgow, they met, at the Buck's Head, Mrs. Maclean Clephane and her two daughters. He mentions that after dinner the ladies sang, 'particularly Aunt Jane, who has more taste and talent than half the people going with great reputations on their backs.' Then there were the Skenes, the Macdonald Buchanans, and all the nieces and nephews of the Clerks' table alliance. 'The well-beloved Erskine,' says Lockhart, 'was seldom absent; and very often Terry or James Ballantyne came with him—sometimes, though less frequently, Constable. To say nothing of such old cronies as Clerk, Thomson, and Kirkpatrick Sharpe.' It was of his boyhood's friend and mentor, Clerk, that Scott said he feared he would leave the world little more than the report of his fame. It was his opinion, as well as that of other competent judges, that he had never met a man of greater powers than Clerk. Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe was also regarded by Scott very highly, and is sketched in a lively page in the Journal, 1825. His effeminacy of voice, his clever and fanciful drawings—which he was too aristocratic to use for increasing his small income—his odd curiosity for scandal centuries old, made Sharpe a very remarkable figure. 'My idea is' (says Scott) 'that C. K. S. with his oddities, tastes, satire, and high aristocratic feelings, resembles Horace Walpole—perhaps in his person also, in a general way.'

Lockhart mentions also Sir Alexander Boswell, author of the humorous song, Jeannie dang the Weaver, and a great bibliomaniac, Sir Alexander Don of Newton, 'the model of a cavalier,' and William Allan, R.A., whom Scott calls a very agreeable, simple-mannered, and pleasant man. Allan became Sir William, President of the Royal Scottish Academy from 1838 to 1850. In July 1826 Scott mentions his having been to see Allan's picture of 'the Landing of Queen Mary.' Three or four of these friends, with Scott and his family, took their places every Sunday at the 'plain dinner' in No. 39 Castle Street.

Scott kept a bounteously loaded table. He was himself a hearty eater, preferring plain substantial fare. He was not a gourmand, still less a glutton. His one good meal was breakfast. At dinner his appetite was neither keen nor nice. 'The only dishes he was at all fond of were the old-fashioned ones to which he had been accustomed in the days of Saunders Fairford.' Readers of the Novels have heard of them all, and few will forget the conclusion of the Fortunes of Nigel: 'My lords and lieges, let us all to our dinner, for the cock-a-leekie is cooling.'

CHAPTER LVI

The National Monument—Still incomplete—The Salisbury Crags—Danger of their Destruction—The Path impassable—Construction of the Radical Road—National Distress—Trials for Sedition—Anecdote of John Clerk—The City Guard.

As a landmark of modern Edinburgh, the National Monument must now be noticed. Its twelve massy columns of white Craigleith stone are familiar to all who have spent an hour in the city. The idea of it dates from 1816, for it was intended to commemorate Scotland's share in the triumphs of the great war. During the following years it was often discussed. The original proposal was to erect a lofty pillar. Then, as we learn from Lord Cockburn, 'there were some who thought that the prevailing effervescence of military patriotism created a good opportunity for improving the public taste by the erection of a great architectural model. The Temple of Minerva, placed on the Calton Hill, struck their imaginations, and though they had no expectation of being able to realise the magnificent conception, they resolved, by beginning, to bring it within the vision of a distant practicability. What, if any, age would finish it, they could not tell; but having got a site, a statute, and about £20,000, they had the honour of commencing it.' The hour of its completion has not arrived yet. Nearly a century has elapsed since George IV. laid the foundation stone in 1822. Perhaps on the occurrence of the centenary the project may once more lay hold of the public imagination. At least the 'distant practicability' remains. Imposing and sublime possibility! Perhaps, in an era of colossal fortunes, some INDIVIDUAL may anticipate the city—engrossed with its Usher Hall and water-fleas—and capture the national glory to crown with immortality his own proud name.

One noble feature of our scenery was completed about this time by the walk round the Salisbury Crags. When Henry Cockburn as a boy of nine scrambled, as he tells us, for the first time to the top of that romantic cliff, the path at its base was not six feet wide, while at places there was no path at all. Between that time and the year 1816 certain persons quarried the rock to such an extent that what was formerly a narrow footpath became, in many places, one hundred feet wide. This impudent theft of public property would shortly have destroyed the whole face of the rock. Fortunately the depredators were stopped in time, and Edinburgh preserved at once a remarkable piece of geological 'testimony,' and one of its finest natural features. Cockburn records that Henry Brougham, 'who as a boy had often clambered among these glorious rocks,' then, in the capacity of Lord Chancellor, pronounced the judgment which finally saved a remnant of the Crags. The old path is mentioned by Scott in the Heart of Midlothian (Chap. VIII.) as having been his favourite evening and morning resort, when engaged with a favourite author or new subject of study. And he added to his enthusiastic description of the view from the Salisbury Crags a brief and mildly expressed reproach. 'It is, I am informed, now (1818) become totally impassable; a circumstance which, if true, reflects little credit on the taste of the Good Town or its leaders.' In a note, added in a later addition, he says, 'A beautiful and solid pathway has, within a few years, been formed around these romantic rocks; and the author has the pleasure to think that the passage in the text gave rise to the undertaking.' This was indeed the case; but, strange to say, the path thus due to Sir Walter Scott got the name of the Radical Road. In 1820, it appears, the 'unemployed' question was flagrant. The men, stimulated by Radicals, were becoming dangerous, when Scott's happy suggestion solved the problem by providing them with a substantial piece of work. The discontent was allayed, and the road was constructed by these vigorous Radicals. The name of the Salisbury Crags commemorates the English invasion of 1336. King Edward III.'s forces were commanded by the famous Earl of Salisbury, who encamped on the Crags, and thus gave the spot its foreign name.[1]

[1] James Grant, however, gives a Gaelic derivation of the name.

The distress which followed as a natural consequence of the prolonged strain of the war, was in those years very severe. Outbreaks of seditious talk were common in England, and led to many serious disturbances. In Scotland they were fewer, because the law still made transportation the penalty for this offence. There were, however, some prosecutions for sedition, and in connection with the first of these, in 1817, Cockburn, who was, with Jeffrey, counsel for one of the defendants, tells a characteristic anecdote of John Clerk, who was counsel for another of the accused, along with James Campbell of Craigie. 'Campbell called on Clerk on the morning of the trial. He found him dressing, and in a frenzy at the anticipated iniquities of the judges; against whom, collectively and individually, there was much slow dogged vituperation throughout the process of shaving. He had on a rather dingy-looking nightshirt: but a nice pure shirt was airing before the fire. When the toilet reached the point at which it was necessary to decide upon the shirt, instead of at once taking up the clean one, he stopped and grumphed, and looked at the one and then at the other, always turning with aversion from the dirty one; and then he approached the other resolutely, as if his mind was made up; but at last he turned away from it, saying fiercely, "No, I'll be d—d if I put on a clean sark for them." Accordingly he insulted their Lordships by going to Court with the foul one. Not like Falkland.'

About the end of the year 1817 Edinburgh streets finally lost the most picturesque of their official figures. The City Guard, a body first enrolled in 1696, now retired from view, their functions being better fulfilled by the new police, and Robert Fergusson's well-known lines became superfluous:

'Gude folk, as ye come frae the fair,

Bide yont frae this black squad;

There's nae sic savages elsewhere

Allowed to wear cockad.'

Scott gives a capital description of them in the Heart of Midlothian (Chap. III.), where he says, 'The venerable corps may now be considered as totally extinct.' From Cockburn we learn that one of these stern-looking but half-dotard warriors used to sit as guard with the prisoners at the bar of the Court of Justiciary. 'They sat so immovably, and looked so severe, with their rugged weather-beaten visages, and hard muscular trunks, that they were no unfit emblems of the janitors of the region to which those they guarded were so often consigned. The disappearance of these picturesque old fellows was a great loss.' He wished they had been perpetuated, if only as curiosities. They were probably the last of our soldiers who carried as their special weapon the old genuine Lochaber axe, which Lord Cockburn styles 'a delightful implement.' Fergusson, who saw its virtues in a more practical way, speaks of the 'deadly paiks,' or blows, freely dealt by the hot-tempered veterans.

'Gie not her bairns sic deadly paiks,

Nor be sae rude,

Wi' firelock or Lochaber axe,

As spill their bluid.'

Their last march (as mentioned in Scott's note) to do duty at Hallow-fair, had something affecting in it. Their drums and fifes had been wont on better days to play, on this joyous occasion, the lively tune of Jockey to the Fair; but on this final occasion the afflicted veterans moved slowly to the dirge of The last time I came ower the muir. They were always greatly disliked by the commons of Edinburgh, who never spoke of them by any better name than the loathsome appellation 'the Toon Rottens' (Rats).

CHAPTER LVII

Scott and the Ballantynes—James in the Canongate—Ceremonies at the 'Waverley' Dinners—Reading of Scenes from the New Volume—John at Trinity—His 'Bower of Bliss'—Anecdote by C. Mathews.

At this distance of time it is difficult either to understand or to condone the wilful delusion in which Scott persisted to regard the two reckless adventurers, James and John Ballantyne. They were lowborn and vulgar: his deep-seated aristocratic feelings should have kept them at a distance. They were utterly devoid of business capacity: his natural shrewdness ought to have seen through them. They were neglectful of duty: his own tireless devotion to work ought to have made him despise them. But they were friends of his boyhood, and he loved them. James was a shrewd critic and an excellent amanuensis, and Scott trusted his judgment and enjoyed his services. John was a humorist, his social clowning was inimitable, and in these capacities he was emphatically a man after Scott's own heart. Both of them knew Scott down to the minutest foible of his simple honest nature. They knew exactly what it was in themselves which pleased him. All they had to do was to be themselves—just as he conceived them. And this was what they did, each in his own way, regardless of expense and consequences. Thus they maintained a hold over their illustrious dupe, which no studied system of flattery could have equalled in the case of the weakest and most foolish of patrons. These two penniless and ruined adventurers lived lives of splendour and luxury, and neither they nor Scott seemed to realise or remember that every penny which supported them had come or would have to come from Scott's estate. The house of James, the elder brother, was not far from his printing works, No. 10 St. John Street, Canongate, which had not long ceased to be the most fashionable street in Edinburgh. Here, in the first house on the west side, was the meeting-place of the ever-memorable Freemason Lodge, the Canongate Kilwinning, whose 'poet-laureate' was no less a genius than Scotland's second glory, Robert Burns. Here, in the town house of the Telfers of Scotstoun, overlooking the Canongate, resided the greatest of Scottish novelists after Scott himself, Tobias Smollett, on his last visit to the capital. No. 13 was the house of Lord Monboddo, and at No. 15 lived the famous Professor Gregory, already mentioned. The Kelso adventurer lived here in grand style, a mighty city magnate, highly decorous and respectable. It was his rôle, and his playing of it was admirable, because it was simply his nature and bent: that he was at any moment entirely ignorant of his real insolvency, or entirely unconscious of the horror that he was accumulating for the most unselfish of friends, one may be excused for doubting. Every one has heard of James Ballantyne's famous dinners—a not uninteresting part of the story of the Waverley Novels. He assembled all his own particular literary friends, and Scott was among the company. It was James's delight to mention the author of Waverley always in mystic tones as 'the Great Unknown,' and the whole affair must have been intensely amusing to the real author, who sat and took part in the proceedings with smiles of good humour. After what the host himself justly called a gorgeous dinner, and after toasting the company, the King, and Mr. Walter Scott, the ladies who might be present retired, and the great 'business' of the little comedy began. Lockhart, as an eyewitness, quaintly describes the scene: 'Then James rose once more, every vein on his brow distended, his eyes solemnly fixed upon vacancy, to propose, not as before in his stentorian key, but "with bated breath," in the sort of whisper by which a stage conspirator thrills the gallery—"Gentlemen, a bumper to the immortal Author of Waverley!"—The uproar of cheering, in which Scott made a fashion of joining, was succeeded by deep silence, and then Ballantyne proceeded—

"In his Lord Burleigh look, serene and serious,

A something of imposing and mysterious"—

to lament the obscurity in which his illustrious but too modest correspondent still chose to conceal himself from the plaudits of the world—to thank the company for the manner in which the nominis umbra had been received, and to assure them that the Author of Waverley would, when informed of the circumstance, feel highly delighted—"the proudest hour of his life," etc. etc. The cool demure fun of Scott's features during all this mummery was perfect; and Erskine's attempt at a gay nonchalance was still more ludicrously meritorious.' Upon this Ballantyne would announce the name of the coming novel, a bumper would be drained to its success, and that was all. The night 'drove on wi' sangs and clatter,' till the senior and graver members, including Scott, had withdrawn. 'Then,' says Lockhart, 'the scene was changed. The claret and olives made way for broiled bones and a mighty bowl of punch; and when a few glasses of the hot beverage had restored his powers, James opened ore rotunda on the merits of the forthcoming romance. "One chapter—one chapter only,"—was the cry. After "Nay, by 'r Lady, nay," and a few more coy shifts, the proof-sheets were at length produced, and James, with many a prefatory hem, read aloud what he considered as the most striking dialogue they contained.' Lockhart was one of the fortunate company who listened to James, in these circumstances, reading, from the Heart of Midlothian, the interview of Jeanie Deans with the Queen in Richmond Park. James's declamation, though marked, of course, by some of his 'pompous tricks,' seems to have been really effective. The sitting ended with the 'Death of Marmion,' delivered in imitation of the great Braham. Later on, James removed his household gods to the New Town, No. 3 Heriot Row. The younger brother, John, was much more original in his ways and doings, and equally reckless of consequences and expense. He had a little villa in the French style at Trinity, on the shore of the Firth. The gardens alone of the ex-needleman must have cost a pretty penny, being laid out with great art so as to seem of considerable extent, 'with many a shady tuft, trellised alley, and mysterious alcove, interspersed among their bright parterres.' His house, as became an auctioneer of curiosities, was crowded with objects of vertu, numberless costly mirrors, and pictures of a certain class, mostly, in fact, theatrical portraits, especially of actresses, which were afterwards bought by Charles Mathews for his gallery at Highgate. The house was furnished like a suburban 'Bower of Bliss' in London or Paris, and had a private wing which his wife was most effectively debarred from entering. If Bluebeard, the clumsy villain, had only enjoyed the services of this clever, resourceful voluptuary, he would have been able to shun the society of his successive 'cleaving michiefs' without having recourse to tragic methods. Johnnie, in fact, could have taught Milton a trick of 'defensive armour,' within which not even a wife could penetrate. This was his ingenious plan: he made every door of entrance into the sacred wing just so narrow as to render it absolutely impossible for Mrs. Ballantyne to squeeze her body through. One can fancy the arrangement giving rise to awkward difficulties, but its efficiency for the main purpose was admirable. It was worthy of a Duc de Richelieu rather than an ex-tailor. Johnnie's festive parties at Trinity were the great social attraction of Edinburgh to the theatrical people of his day. Mathews, Braham, Kean, and Kemble were all frequent guests when acting in Edinburgh. In Mathews' Memoirs there is an anecdote of John Ballantyne which is of interest in itself, while happily illustrative of the character of Wee Johnny. Ballantyne, Constable, and Terry were dining with the Mathews family, when John, who had a certain indiscreet vivacity when the wine began to affect him, was talking to Mathews about some books, and concluded by saying, 'I shall soon send you Scott's new novel.' The effect may be imagined, especially on Constable. 'He,' says Mrs. Mathews, 'looked daggers—and Terry used some—for with a stern brow and a correcting tone, he cried out John! adding with a growl, like one reproving a mischievous dog,—"Ah, what are you about?" which made us droop our eyes for the indiscreet tatler; while wee Johnny looked like an impersonation of fear—startled at the "sound himself had made." Not another word was said: but our little good-natured friend's lapse was sacred with us, and the secret was never divulged while it was important to preserve it.'

CHAPTER LVIII

Anecdotes of Constable—'The Czar'—Plans the Magnum Opus—Anecdote of Longmans and Co.—Constable's House and Equipage—John Ballantyne's Habits—Horses and Dogs—Anecdote by Scott of his Liberality—Scott's Sorrow at his Death.

At John Ballantyne's house in Trinity, his great co-adjutor Constable was often to be seen. There Lockhart first met him. Struck by the majestic appearance of the publisher, he made a remark to Scott on Constable's 'gentlemanlike' (publishers were only 'booksellers' in those days) 'and distinguished appearance.' 'Ay,' replied Scott, 'Constable is indeed a grand-looking chield. He puts me in mind of Fielding's apology for Lady Booby—to wit, that Joseph Andrews had an air which, to those who had not seen many noblemen, would give an idea of nobility.' He is said to have been a large feeder and deep drinker: of a violent temper, but 'easily overawed by people of consequence.' He was, on the whole, not one of Scott's favourites—a circumstance, however, which was more owing to the great man's blind partiality for the Ballantynes, with whom Constable necessarily came into frequent contact. Scott, however, praises Constable as 'generous and far from bad-hearted.' Among his brothers of 'the trade' Constable was nicknamed 'the Czar,'and also 'the Crafty.' Scott declared that Constable was 'the prince of book-sellers.' He considered that the Crafty knew more of the business of a bookseller in planning and executing popular works than any man of his time. His imperious style was natural to the man, and his unaided rise to eminence in his important calling largely justified his pride. His share in the blame for the disaster of 1826 was at the time exaggerated, unfortunately also in the mind of Scott himself. It was the Ballantyne co-partnery that led to the unfortunate bill transactions, and the great pity was that both Constable and Scott took these tragic jokers on their own fictitious valuation. Constable I believe to have been truly a great man and in all respects a gentleman: as different in mental qualities as he was in physical dignity from the bounding brothers of Kelso. Who can fail to admit the genius of the man who foresaw the value of the Waverley Novels, and who provided Scott with the greatest consolation of his last sad years—the magnum opus of the collected edition, and thus enabled him to carry out his romantic resolve to pay the so-called debts to the full? John Ballantyne told Lockhart a good story of Constable's fondness for bestowing nicknames. 'One day a partner of the house of Longman was dining with him in the country, to settle an important piece of business, about which there occurred a good deal of difficulty. "What fine swans you have in your pond there!" said the Londoner, by way of parenthesis.—"Swans!" cried Constable; "they are only geese, man. There are just five of them, if you please to observe, and their names are Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown." This skit cost the Crafty a good bargain.' Lockhart soon became a frequent visitor at Constable's country seat of Craigcrook Castle (afterwards tenanted by Francis Jeffrey), and says that he did the honours of the ancient home of noble Grahams with all the ease that might have been looked for had he been the long-descended owner of the place. He greatly admired Constable's 'manly and vigorous' conversation, full of old Scotch anecdotes, which he told with a spirit and humour only second to his great author's. 'His very equipage,' Lockhart adds, 'kept up the series of contrasts between him and the two Ballantynes. Constable went back and forward between the town and Polton in a deep-hung and capacious green barouche, without any pretence at heraldic blazonry, drawn by a pair of sleek, black, long-tailed horses, and conducted by a grave old coachman in plain blue livery. The Printer of the Canongate drove himself and his wife about the streets and suburbs in a snug machine, which did not overburthen one powerful and steady cob:—while the gay Auctioneer, whenever he left the saddle for the box, mounted a bright blue dogcart, and rattled down the Newhaven Road with two high-mettled steeds prancing tandem before him.' Johnnie, indeed, kept up a good stable, hunted the fox at times, and had the pleasant whim of naming his numerous steeds after various characters in Scott's works. His daily mount was a milk-white hunter, y-clept Old Mortality, and he was always attended by a leash or two of greyhounds, which he named Die Vernon, Jenny Dennison, and so on. At business he appeared in sporting half-dress,—'a light-grey frock, with emblems of the chase on its silver buttons, white cord breeches, and jockey-boots in Meltonian order.' Scott was a constant frequenter of his auction rooms in Hanover Street, at the door of which his favourite Maida was to be seen waiting his arrival from the Court, couched among Johnnie's greyhounds. Such was the frivolous, but astute, underminer, who succeeded to the end in maintaining a fatal hold on the great genius, and finally left him to toil as a slave, often at a loss for money for mere current expenses, during the last years of what might have been one of the happiest of lives. It is a melancholy fact, and perhaps, after all, his own favourite saying fits it best—that often the wisest of men keep, as it were, the average stock of folly only in reserve, to be all expended on some one flagrant absurdity. One can at least understand Scott's affection for John Ballantyne, when one thinks of such an incident as this, related by Scott himself: 'A poor divinity student was attending his sale one day, and Johnnie remarked to him that he looked as if he were in bad health. The young man assented with a sigh. "Come," said Ballantyne, "I think I ken the secret of a sort of draft that would relieve you—particularly," he added, handing him a cheque for £$ or £10—"particularly, my dear, if taken upon an empty stomach."

John Ballantyne died at Edinburgh in the summer of 1821. Scott and Lockhart attended his funeral in the Canongate churchyard. 'As we stood together' (the latter relates), 'while they were smoothing the turf over John's remains, the heavens, which had been dark and slaty, cleared suddenly, and the midsummer sun shone forth in his strength. Scott, ever awake to the "skiey influences," cast his eye along the overhanging line of the Calton Hill, with its gleaming walls and towers, and then turning to the grave again, "I feel," he whispered in my ear, "as if there would be less sunshine for me from this day forth."'

John Ballantyne was thus taken away from the evil to come, but James lived till 1833. Archibald Constable died on the 21st of July 1827. His proud spirit could not survive the tremendous downfall of his splendid fortunes. All his great undertakings, except the Miscellany, had passed from his control. He was reduced to 'an obscure closet of a shop,' and found himself without either capital or credit to start a new career. Of all with whom Scott had to do in the business of life, he is the only man in whose case Scott's natural generosity did not at once overcome every shadow of well or ill founded resentment or grudge.

CHAPTER LIX

The Baronetcy—Reasons for accepting—Marriage of Sophia Scott to John Gibson Lockhart—Charles Scott and Archdeacon Williams—Improvements in Edinburgh—The 'Water Caddies'—Drama of Rob Roy—The Burns Dinner—Henry Mackenzie.

It was in the end of the year 1818 that Scott received, through Lord Sidmouth, intimation of the Prince Regent's desire to confer on him a baronetcy. When informed of it privately, a few months before this, by Chief-Commissioner Adam, he had hesitated about accepting such an honour, feeling that it might dangerously affect the style of living and the ideas and aspirations of a contented family. However, the sudden death of Charles Charpentier altered all this. He left, as was believed, a large fortune, and had settled the reversion on his sister's family. The inheritance in the end came to nothing, but the expectation removed Scott's doubts as to accepting the title. His eldest son having by this time settled to enter the Army, it was obvious that the title would be of real advantage to him in his profession. We have fortunately Scott's views expressed in the frankest manner in a letter to Morritt, and they certainly require no comment. 'It would be easy,' he says, 'saying a parcel of fine things about my contempt of rank, and so forth; but although I would not have gone a step out of my way to have asked, or bought, or begged, or borrowed a distinction, which to me personally will rather be inconvenient than otherwise, yet coming as it does directly from the source of feudal honours, and as an honour, I am really gratified with it;—especially as it is intimated that it is His Royal Highness's pleasure to heat the oven for me expressly, without waiting till he has some new batch of Baronets ready in dough.... After all, if one must speak for themselves, I have my quarters and emblazonments, free of all stain but Border theft and High Treason, which I hope are gentlemanlike crimes; and I hope Sir Walter Scott will not sound worse than Sir Humphry Davy, though my merits are as much under his, in point of utility, as can well be imagined. But a name is something, and mine is the better of the two.' It was not till March 1820 that he was able to go to London, having been prevented by illness at one time, and on a second proposed occasion by family afflictions. When he did go to London, his admirer was King George the Fourth. To him, at all events, the event was an honour and a credit, for it proceeded entirely from himself. His greeting to the new Baronet was, 'I shall always reflect with pleasure on Sir Walter Scott's having been the first creation of my reign.' Shortly after this the two English Universities offered him the honorary degree of D.C.L. He was never able to avail himself of either offer.

On the 29th of April in this year, his daughter Sophia was married to John Gibson Lockhart. The son-in-law mentions that Sir Walter hastened his return from London—he had been sitting to Lawrence at the King's request—in order to get the marriage over before the unlucky month of May. Lockhart says too little of his own affairs, but he mentions that the wedding took place, more Scotico, in the evening, and that Sir Walter, adhering on all such occasions to ancient modes of observance with the same punctiliousness which he mentions as distinguishing his worthy father, gave a jolly supper afterwards to all the friends and connections of the young couple.

Towards the end of the year the second son, Charles, also left the family circle. He went to Lampeter to be under the celebrated scholar John Williams, afterwards Archdeacon of Cardigan. Mr. Williams, who became Rector of the Edinburgh Academy in 1824, was much appreciated by Scott, not only for his erudition, but as being 'always pleasant company.' At another time he calls him 'a heaven-born teacher.'

We may mention here another item in the constant process of modernising the city. About this time a strong feeling was growing, and even obtaining vent in public, against the sway of the Town Council. The position of Edinburgh, 'always thirsty and unwashed,' was then, by Lord Cockburn's account, in reference to water positively frightful. The wretched shallow tank on the north side of the Pentlands, the only source of supply, was often and for long periods empty. But the Town Council would do nothing. A private company was therefore formed, and the supply began to be regular. Then water-pipes were put into private houses, and the ancient fraternity of water-carriers found their occupation gone. 'In a very few years,' says Cockburn, 'there was not one extant. They were a very curious tribe, consisting of both men and women, but the former were perhaps the more numerous. Their days were passed in climbing up lofty stairs to the "flats." The little casks of water, when filled from the street wells, were slung upon their backs, suspended by a leather strap, which was held in front by the hand. They acquired a stopping attitude, by which they were easily recognised even when off duty. They were all rather old, and seemed little; but this last might be owing to their stooping. The men very generally had old red jackets, probably the remnants of the Highland Watch, or of the City Guard; and the women were always covered with thick duffle greatcoats, and wore black hats like the men. Every house had its favourite "Water Caddie." The fee (I believe) was a penny per barrel. In spite of their splashy lives and public-well discussions, they were rather civil, and very cracky creatures. What fretted them most was being obstructed in going up a stair; and their occasionally tottering legs testified that they had no bigotry against qualifying the water with a little whisky. They never plied between Saturday night and Monday morning; that is, their employers had bad hot water all Sunday. These bodies were such favourites, that the extinction of their trade was urged seriously as a reason against water being allowed to get into our houses in its own way.'

In February 1819 a dramatised version of Rob Roy was played in the Edinburgh Theatre. The Bailie was played by the famous actor Charles Mackay, who, being a native of Glasgow, was able to do full justice to the dialect and all the little amusing peculiarities of the character. Scott is said to have been greatly interested in this representation of his story, and Lockhart says 'it was extremely diverting to watch the play of his features during Mackay's admirable realisation of his conception.' On his benefit night 'the Bailie' received an epistle of kind congratulation from no less a personage than Jedediah Cleishbotham. It is worth mentioning that, though his fellow-citizens greeted him on entering his box with 'some mark of general respect and admiration,' there was never anything said or done to embarrass him as hinting at his authorship of the play.

While Rob Roy was enjoying its successful run, a party of two or three hundred Edinburgh gentlemen met, on February 22nd, at what has since become the national cult—a Burns dinner. This function was distinguished by a short speech from the veteran 'Man of Feeling,' who had welcomed Burns and praised his genius more than thirty years before. Scott's feeling towards Burns was one of constantly increasing admiration. 'Long life to thy fame' (he says in his Journal) 'and peace to thy soul, Rob Burns! When I want to express a sentiment which I feel strongly, I find the phrase in Shakespeare—or thee.' For Henry Mackenzie he had a strong regard. The old man surprised him by unfolding literary schemes in his old age. He loved to unbosom himself to Scott, and called him his 'literary confessor,' and 'I am sure' (said the patient victim) 'I am glad to return the kindnesses which he showed me long since in George Square.' Scott's description of the veteran in 1825 is as follows: 'No man is less known from his writings. We would suppose a retired, modest, somewhat affected man, with a white handkerchief and a sigh ready for every sentiment. No such thing: H. M. is alert as a contracting tailor's needle in every sort of business—a politician and a sportsman—shoots and fishes in a sort even to this day—and is the life of the company with anecdote and fun. Sometimes, his daughter tells me, he is in low spirits at home, but really I never see anything of it in society.

In January 1831 Scott got the news of Henry Mackenzie's death. By this time Scott was contemplating the near approach of his own end, but he can still spare a regret for the old man, 'gayest of the gay, though most sensitive of the sentimental,' who had so long filled a niche in Scottish literature.

CHAPTER LX

The Commercial Disaster—Ruin of Ballantyne (Scott) and Constable—Scott's Feeling—Universal Sympathy—Offer of Help—Brave Reply—Cheerful Spirit—Constable—The Agreement—Removal from Castle Street—Death of Lady Scott—The Visit to Paris.

James Ballantyne on his deathbed declared that all the appearances of his prosperity were merely shadows. But Scott up to the end of 1825 had no idea of the magnitude of the crisis that had been so long preparing. On the 18th of December in that year he penned in his Journal that melancholy summary of his career: 'What a life mine has been! Half-educated, almost wholly neglected or left to myself; stuffing my head with most nonsensical trash, and undervalued by most of my companions for a time; getting forward, and held a bold and clever fellow, contrary to the opinion of all who thought me a mere dreamer; broken-hearted for two years; my heart handsomely pieced again—but the crack will remain till my dying day. Rich and poor four or five times; once on the verge of ruin, yet opened a new source of wealth almost overflowing. Now to be broken in my pitch of pride.... Nobody in the end can lose a penny by me—that is one comfort.' Following entries prove that Ballantyne professed confidence. Even on 14th January, when Scott had received 'an odd mysterious letter' from Constable, hinting calamity, James had no doubts! On Tuesday the 17th the blow fell. Ballantyne came in the morning to say that he had arranged to stop. His own account of the interview is: 'It was between eight and nine in the morning that I made the final communication. No doubt he was greatly stunned—but, upon the whole, he bore it with wonderful fortitude. He asked—"Well, what is the actual step we must first take? I suppose we must do something?" I reminded him that two or three thousand pounds were due that day, so that we had only to do what we must do—refuse payment—to bring the disclosure sufficiently before the world. He took leave of me with these striking words—"Well, James, depend upon that, I will never forsake you."'

In the Journal of that day—'I felt rather sneaking as I came home from the Parliament House—felt as if I were liable monstrari digito in no very pleasant way. But this must be borne cum caeteris.' On which Lord Cockburn remarks: 'very natural for him to feel so; but it was the feeling of nobody else.'

From Cockburn's pages we can realise the astounding effect of the news of Scott's implication in the disaster upon his friends and fellow-citizens. The 'black Tuesday' became a recollection of sadness and pain to all who personally knew him. The destruction of half the city could not have caused greater astonishment and sorrow. His professional brethren now for the first time learned that Scott had 'dabbled in trade.' 'How humbled,' says Cockburn, 'we felt when we saw him—the pride of us all—dashed from his lofty and honourable station, and all the fruits of his well-worked talents gone. He had not then even a political enemy. There was not one of those whom his thoughtlessness had so sorely provoked, who would not have given every spare farthing he possessed to retrieve Sir Walter. Well do I remember his first appearance after this calamity was divulged, when he walked into Court one day in January 1826. There was no affectation, and no reality, of facing it; no look of indifference or defiance; but the manly and modest air of a gentleman conscious of some folly, but of perfect rectitude, and of most heroic and honourable resolutions. It was on that very day, I believe, that he said a very fine thing. Some of his friends offered him, or rather proposed to offer him, enough of money, as was supposed, to enable him to arrange with his creditors. He paused for a moment; and then, recollecting his powers, said proudly—"No! this right hand shall work it all off." His friend William Clerk supped with him one night after his ruin was declared. They discussed the whole affair openly and playfully; till at last they laughed over their noggins at the change, and Sir Walter observed that he felt something like Lambert and the other Regicides, who, Pepys says, when he saw them going to be hanged and quartered, were as cheerful and comfortable as any gentlemen could be in that situation.'

This probably refers to the evening, mentioned in Scott's Journal, when his daughter was very greatly surprised by the loud hilarity of Clerk and his host. 'But do people suppose,' adds Scott, 'that he was less sorry for his poor sister,[1] or I for my lost fortune?' He declares that pride was his strongest passion—a passion which never hinged upon world's gear, which was always with him—light come, light go!

[1] Miss Elizabeth Clerk's sudden death had also occurred on the 17th of January.

Constable had stood like a hero in the breach to the last moment. His last device, a good one if he could have by magic imparted his own knowledge, foresight, and sublime faith to a board of directors, was to take Lockhart (in the capacity of a confidential friend of the author of Waverley) with him to the Bank of England, and to apply for a loan of from £100,000 to £200,000 on the security of the copyrights. These, it must be remembered, were the Encyclopedia Britannica, half of the Edinburgh Review, nearly all Scott's poetry, the Waverley Novels, and the Life of Napoleon, on which Scott was at the time working. Lockhart refused to interfere without direct instructions from Sir Walter. Poor Constable, he says, became livid with rage.

The claims against Scott were found in the end to amount to £130,000. All the world knows the course Scott elected to take; how he at once put his affairs in the hands of trustees, and became, by his own offer, the vassal of his creditors for life, toiling henceforward to pay their claims, not to enrich himself. From his side it was a noble sacrifice, as noble as any ever offered on the altar of honour. If the debts had been real, if he had actually had in possession the sum and used it, no other course would have been possible salvo honore. But commercial debts, the largely fictitious product of stamps and paper, should have been paid commercially. Such a course, he himself said, he might have advised a client to take, and it would have saved him much sorrow, pain, and trouble, without harming any man. However, he preferred it otherwise, and received the news of the acceptance of his offer as if it had been a mighty favour. He wrote in his Journal: 'This is handsome and confidential, and must warm my best efforts to get them out of the scrape.'

The agreement was finally, not of course without harassment and difficulty, passed. He was left in possession of Abbotsford, his official salary was left him to support his family, everything else was sold for behoof of the creditors, and all his future literary gains were assigned to them in advance. On March 15th he left his house in Castle Street, and on that night he wrote in his Journal: 'I never reckoned upon a change in this particular so long as I held an office in the Court of Session. In all my former changes of residence it was from good to better—this is retrograding. I leave this house for sale, and I cease to be an Edinburgh citizen, in the sense of being a proprietor, which my father and I have been for sixty years at least. So farewell, poor 39, and may you never harbour worse people than those who now leave you.'

Very soon after the departure from Castle Street a second calamity, probably hastened by the former, overtook the family. Lady Scott died at Abbotsford on the 14th of May. Scott, who was engaged in his Court duties at Edinburgh, and staying now in Mrs. Brown's lodgings, North St. David Street, reached Abbotsford late in the evening of the 15th. His weakly daughter Anne, worn out with attendance, was hysterical when he arrived. The entries in his Journal are sadly touching: 'When I contrast what this place now is with what it has been not long since, I think my heart will break. Lonely, aged, deprived of my family—all but poor Anne; an impoverished, an embarrassed man, deprived of the sharer of my thoughts, who could always talk down my sense of the calamitous apprehensions which break the heart that must bear them alone.'

The funeral took place on the 22nd at Dryburgh. Scott mentions very kindly the Rev. E. B. Ramsay, who performed the funeral service. This gentleman afterwards became famous, when Dean of Edinburgh, by his well-known book Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life.

And now Scott found the task he had imposed upon himself bracing him against despondency. He returned to Edinburgh and his old 'task,' thankful that it was of a graver nature (the Life of Napoleon), and determined to fight on 'for the sake of the children and of my own character.'

A visit to London and Paris was necessitated in October by his work on Napoleon. The change did him good, and Lockhart mentions that his behaviour under misfortunes so terrible had gained for him 'a deep and respectful sympathy, which was brought home to him in a way not to be mistaken.' This expedition for information had cost him £200—a matter for serious consideration in his changed circumstances.

CHAPTER LXI

House in Walker Street—Ill-health—Extraordinary Labours—Article on Hoffman—Kindness to Literary People—Murray's Party—Theatrical Fund Dinner—Life of Napoleon—Payment of £28,000 to Creditors—The Lockharts at Portobello—Grandfather's Tales—Domestic Happiness—Visit of Adolphus.

On resuming his duties in Edinburgh at the end of November (1826), Scott went to reside in a furnished house in Walker Street, which he had taken for the winter. In his Journal, 27th November, he says: 'Walter came and supped with us, which diverted some heavy thoughts. It is impossible not to compare this return to Edinburgh with others in more happy times. But we should rather recollect under what distress of mind I took up my lodgings in Mrs. Brown's last summer, and then the balance weighs deeply on the favourable side. This house is comfortable and convenient.' It was for the sake of his daughter's company that he had taken this house. The winter, however, proved a weary time. His incessant toil at his Napoleon was hampered by continual ill-health—successive attacks of rheumatism, which might well have excused him from work of any kind. But his watchword was, 'I am now at my oar, and I must row hard.' To crown all his troubles, the weather was exceptionally cold and trying. He could not but think often of the days when rain and cold and long night journeys did him no harm, and he was painfully conscious of a speedy break-up of the hard-wrought machine. Bad nights were the rule, and he was sometimes sick with mere pain. Sometimes he notes his work, proof-sheets and the like, as 'finished mechanically.' 'All well,' he ends up on 21st December, 'if the machine would but keep in order, but "The spinning-wheel is auld and stiff." I shall never see the threescore and ten, and shall be summed up at a discount. No help for it, and no matter either.' Yet, even in these circumstances, he wrote more than his task. One of these minor pieces was an article on Hoffman for the Foreign Quarterly, a review edited by R. P. Gillies. It was done purely as a kindness to Gillies, giving, as Lockhart says, a poor brother author £100 at the expense of considerable time and drudgery to himself. He had done the same in numberless instances, often for persons whose only claim on him was that of the common vocation. At this time he naturally went but little into society, but his enjoyment of good company could still be keen. On spending an evening with John A. Murray, he says: 'When I am out with a party of my Opposition friends, the day is often merrier than when with our own set. Is it because they are cleverer? Jeffrey and Harry Cockburn are, to be sure, very extraordinary men; yet it is not owing to that entirely. I believe both parties meet with the feeling of something like novelty—we have not worn out our jests in daily contact.'

On the 23rd of February 1827 he presided at the famous Theatrical Fund Dinner, at which he publicly admitted his authorship of the Waverley Novels. All he says of the incident is, 'Meadowbank taxed me with the novels, and to end that farce at once I pleaded guilty, so that splore is ended.' Of course, as a matter of fact, the secret had been an open one from the day of the first meeting of Ballantyne's creditors. When Scott was thinking of himself as liable monstrari digito as the partner of an insolvent firm, every one else was thinking of him as the now-revealed 'author of Waverley.' 'Scott ruined,' Earl Dudley exclaimed on hearing the news, 'the author of Waverley ruined! Good God! let every man to whom he has given months of delight give him a sixpence, and he will rise to-morrow morning richer than Rothschild!' That was probably what was in the mind of every man who gazed on Scott's calm, honest face in the first days of trouble.

On the 7th of June he finished Napoleon, which had grown on his hands, much beyond the original estimate, to nine closely-printed volumes. The work produced £18,000 for his creditors, so that in eighteen months he had actually diminished his obligations by £28,000.

One of the most touching episodes of Scott's life was his loving anxiety for his invalid grandson, the child of Lockhart and Sophia. Knowing the fearful strain that Sir Walter was now keeping up in working double tides for his bondholding masters, Lockhart and his wife did what they could to induce him to moderate his zeal. 'But nothing,' says Lockhart, 'was so useful as the presence of his invalid grandson. The poor child was at this time so far restored as to be able to sit on his pony again; and Sir Walter, who had conceived, the very day he finished Napoleon, the notion of putting together a series of Tales on the History of Scotland, somewhat in the manner of Mr. Croker's on that of England, rode daily among the woods with his "Hugh Littlejohn," and told the story, and ascertained that it suited the comprehension of boyhood, before he reduced it to writing.' During the rest of this year he wrote new matter which filled five to six volumes in the uniform edition of his works, but this Lockhart thinks was light and easy compared with 'the perilous drudgery' of the preceding eighteen months.

Ill-health and the perpetual consciousness of his bondage had marvellously little effect as yet on the quality of his work. To friends who visited him casually he seems to have rarely alluded to any of his troubles. Adolphus, however, mentions that once, when speaking of his Life of Napoleon, he said in a quiet but touching tone, 'I could have done it better, if I had written at more leisure, and with a mind more at ease.' Adolphus was deeply impressed by the sight of his quiet cheerfulness among his family and their young friends. He has preserved one of Scott's remarks on the subject of happiness which is both characteristic and, considering the time, strikingly suggestive. Scott having said something about an accident which had spoiled the promised pleasure of a visit to his daughter in London, then observed, 'I have had as much happiness in my time as most men, and I must not complain now.' Adolphus replied that, whatever had been his share of happiness, no one could have laboured better for it. Scott's answer was, 'I consider the capacity to labour as part of the happiness I have enjoyed.' In mentioning Adolphus (who had written a book on the authorship of the Waverley Novels) and his visit, Scott wrote in his Journal, 'He is a modest as well as an able man, and I am obliged to him for the delicacy with which he treated a matter in which I was personally so much concerned.'

CHAPTER LXII

Incident of Gourgaud—Expected Duel—Scott's Preparations—Tired of Edinburgh—Changing Aspect of New Town—The 'Markets' superseded by Shops—The Female Poisoner—Scott's opinion of 'Not Proven'—Points in its Favour.

In the Life of Napoleon Scott had made use of certain documents which had been put at his disposal in the British Colonial Office. Founding on these unimpeachable authorities, he had told how General Gourgaud, one of Napoleon's aides-de-camp at St. Helena, though he had given the British Government private information that Bonaparte's complaints of ill-usage were utterly unfounded, had afterwards supported and encouraged in France the idea that Sir Hudson Lowe's conduct towards his illustrious prisoner had been cruel and tyrannical. About the end of August Cadell sent extracts from French newspapers to Scott, stating that Gourgaud was going to London to verify the statements in the history. This Cadell took to mean that the fire-eater intended to fasten a quarrel on Scott and challenge him to a duel. The good bookseller was alarmed, but Scott took it all very coolly. He had really dealt very moderately and delicately with Gourgaud's shaky reputation, and when the latter at last wrote his attack in the French newspapers, Scott retorted by simply publishing in full the extracts he had made from the records of the Colonial Office. The General, though he continued to load Scott with abuse, did not dare to pen a direct negative, and so the affair 'fizzled out.' Scott had expected a challenge, and had quite made up his mind to fight, Clerk promising to act as his second. 'He shall not dishonour the country through my sides, I can assure him.' In the end he writes, 'I wonder he did not come over and try his manhood otherwise. I would not have shunned him nor any Frenchman who ever kissed Bonaparte's breech.'

At this period Scott's heart became more and more fixed upon Abbotsford, his interest in Edinburgh proportionately less. Edinburgh was now only the workshop, in which he must toil with fettered limbs, and without the buoyancy of health and strength which used to make his labours a portion of his happiness. 'Fagged by the Court'—'no time for work'—fagged by the good company of Edinburgh, he is tempted to run off to Abbotsford—'but it will not do; and, sooth to speak, it ought not to do; though it would do me much pleasure if it would do.' Such was his state of mind, and his interest in local affairs and changes of the city was naturally diminished. About the time of the Ballantyne disaster, the opening of the New Town markets at Stockbridge might perhaps have drawn his attention to the great change going on in the city, which has made it internally so modern, and so commonplace. The New Town was now fast becoming a town of shops. The old 'market' system, so characteristic of Edinburgh, was dying out. Formerly the dealers in any one commodity were all grouped together in a certain fixed and limited locality. This was what was meant by a 'market': a congregation of shops or rather booths. For example, the Flesh Market was at the Tron: the Cattle Market at King's Stables end of the Grassmarket, and so on. Cockburn remembered when, about 1810, the only supply of fish for the citizens was in the Fish Market Close, which he justly calls a steep, narrow, stinking ravine. 'The fish' (he says) 'were generally thrown out on the street at the head of the close, whence they were dragged down by dirty boys or dirtier women; and then sold unwashed—for there was not a drop of water in the place—from old, rickety, scaly wooden tables, exposed to all the rain, dust and filth.... I doubt if there was a single fish-shop in Edinburgh so early as the year 1822.' The fruit and vegetable market was quite as bad, managed by 'a college of old gin-drinking women, who congregated with stools and tables round the Tron Church.' The fruit was put on the tables, but the vegetables were thrown on the ground. 'I doubt, Cockburn adds, 'if there was a fruit-shop in Edinburgh in 1815. All shops indeed meant for the sale of any article on which there was a local tax or market-custom, were discouraged by the magistrates or their tacksman as interfering with the collection of the dues. The growth of shops of all kinds in the New Town is remarkable. I believe there were not half a dozen of them in the whole New Town, west of St. Andrew Street, in 1810. The dislike to them was so great, that any proprietor who allowed one was abused as an unneighbourly fellow.'