Chapter VII: Part 7

One delusion under which the illustrious sufferer laboured was preparing Abbotsford for the reception of the Duke of Wellington. Another was, his personation of the character of a Scottish judge trying his own daughters. In the course of the latter, there were painful bursts of violence and excitement. ‘It is strange,’ said Laidlaw, ‘that he never refers to any of his works or literary plans.’ The truth is, he had thrown them off, to use an expression of his own, with ‘an effort as spontaneous as that of a tree resigning its leaves to the wind,’ and they soon passed from his memory. Besides, he had, when in health, always practised a modest reticence respecting his works, which had become habitual. The following points to the end of the struggle:

‘Poor papa still lingers, although in the most hopeless state of
mind and body. For this week past, the doctor has taken leave every
day, saying he could not survive the twenty-four hours; and to-day,
he says the pulse is weaker and worse than ever it has been, and
that his living is almost a miracle. How thankful we shall be when
it pleases God he is at rest, for a more complete aberration of
mind never was before; and he even now is so violent we sometimes
dare not go within reach of his hand. And the miserable scenes we
have witnessed before his strength was reduced as it now is! One
great comfort has been, all suffering, so far as we can judge,
mental or bodily, has been spared, and that for two months past he
has not for an instant been aware of his situation. My brothers
were sent for, and have been here for two days. When all is over,
Anne and I and the children will leave this now miserable place for
ever. Lockhart is obliged to go straight to London, but we mean
to spend a couple of weeks with his relations in Lanarkshire, and
perhaps take Rokeby in our way up. We are both much better than you
would expect under such sad circumstances. Excuse this miserable
scrawl; I hardly know what I write....

C. SOPHIA LOCKHART.

‘ABBOTSFORD, _Sunday’ [September 16, 1832]_.[12]

On the day succeeding that on which this melancholy letter would seem to have been written, Sir Walter had a brief interval of consciousness, as described by Lockhart, although the biographer would appear to have misdated the arrival of the sons of the poet. A few more days terminated the struggle; Sir Walter died on the 21st of September. In October, Laidlaw notes that Major Scott had given him, accompanied with a most gratifying letter, the locket which Sir Walter constantly wore about his neck. This was presented to Sir Walter by Major Scott and his wife (inscribed ‘From Walter and Jane’) on the day of their marriage, and it contained some of the hair of each. Major Scott enclosed as much of Sir Walter’s hair as would supply the place of theirs, which he wished to be taken out of the locket. ‘I shall try to find room for all,’ said Mr Laidlaw; and he did find room, interlacing the various hairs, and wearing the invaluable jewel to his dying day. ‘What a change the loss of Abbotsford must be to the Fergusons and you all!’ writes Mrs Lockhart, ‘the gentle Sophia,’ as Miss Martineau describes the fair sufferer. ‘It breaks my heart when I think of the silence and desolation that now reign there. They talk of a monument! God knows papa needs no monument; he has left behind him that which won’t pass away. But if the people of Melrose do anything, I think a great cairn on one of the hills would be what he would have chosen himself.’ Let the hills themselves suffice!

‘A mightier monument command
The mountains of his native land.’[13]

After the death of his chief, Mr Laidlaw removed to the county of Ross, and was successively factor on the estates of Seaforth and Balnagown. His health failing, he went to reside with his brother, Mr James Laidlaw, sheep-farmer at Contin, also in Ross-shire, and there he died May 18, 1845. His remains were interred in the churchyard of Contin, a retired spot under the shade of Tor Achilty, one of the loftiest and most picturesque of the Ross-shire mountains, and amidst the most enchanting Highland scenery. The lord of the manor, Sir George S. Mackenzie of Coul, Bart., erected a tomb, with a marble tablet, to his memory.

Mr Laidlaw cherished with religious care all his memorials of Abbotsford, where, indeed, his heart may be said to have remained till its last pulsation. The desk in which the first manuscript of _Waverley_ was deposited stood in his room; the works inscribed and presented by the author were carefully ranged on his shelves; the letters he had received from him were treasured up; the pens with which _Ivanhoe_ was written were laid past, and kept as a sacred thing; but above all he valued the brooch which was round the neck of Scott when he died. That most interesting ornament Mr Laidlaw wore while a trace of sensibility remained, and it has descended to another generation--one of the most precious of the personal _reliquiæ_ of a splendid but melancholy friendship.

* * * * *

The biographer of Scott, John Gibson Lockhart, was not a social or clubable man. He was fastidious and reserved, silent in mixed company (he heard with only one ear, and was too proud to acknowledge it), and was inveterately prone to satire, so that he earned for himself the appellation of ‘The Scorpion,’ and he was a victim to dyspepsia, which, perhaps, like charity, ought to cover a multitude of sins. His fine acute intellect and classic taste were often obscured and his better sympathies chilled by pain and languor. To a few friends, however, Lockhart at times unbosomed himself. With them his cold, sarcastic, haughty manner melted away--at least for a season--and in those genial hours he was the most confiding and delightful of companions. As shewing the better nature and higher feelings of the man, we are tempted to subjoin one of his letters to William Laidlaw, in which he speaks of the sense of duty and responsibility under which he wrote the Memoirs of Scott--a work which, with all its faults, is unquestionably the best biography since Boswell’s _Life of Johnson_. There is great tenderness in the following letter; and the picture which the writer draws of his happy fireside contrasts painfully with his latter years, when broken health, a desolate hearth, and feelings lacerated by paternal troubles and anxieties, might have made him join in that lamentation of the ancient British bard which he applied to the old age of Thomas Campbell:

‘God hath provided unpleasant things for me;
Dead is Morgeneu, dead is Mordav,
Dead is Morien, dead are those I love.’[14]

Few letters of Lockhart’s are so generally interesting or so valuable, biographically, as the following:

‘LONDON, _January 19, 1837_.

‘MY DEAR LAIDLAW--I received yesterday your letter and a very
munificent donation of ptarmigan, for both which accept my best
thanks. They were both welcome as remembrancers of Scotland,
of old days, and of your kindness and affection, of which last,
though I am the worst of correspondents, neither I nor my wife are
ever forgetful. The account you give of your situation at present
is, considering how the world wags, not unsatisfactory. Would it
were possible to find myself placed in something of a similar
locality, and with the means of enjoying the country by day and my
books at night, without the necessity of dividing most of my time
between the labours of the desk--mere drudge-labours mostly--and
the harassing turmoil of worldly society, for which I never had
much, and now-a-days have rarely indeed any, relish! But my wife
and children bind me to the bit, and I am well pleased with the
fetters. Walter is now a tall and very handsome boy of near eleven
years; Charlotte, a very winsome gipsy of eight--both intelligent
in the extreme, and both, notwithstanding all possible spoiling,
as simple, natural, and unselfish as if they had been bred on a
hillside and in a family of twelve. Sophia is your old friend--fat,
fair, and by-and-by to be forty, which I now am, and over, God
bless the mark! but though I think I am wiser, at least more sober,
neither richer nor more likely to be rich than I was in the days of
Chiefswood and Kaeside--after all, _our_ best days, I still believe.

‘Politics, over which we used sometimes to dispute, I have quite
forsworn. I have satisfied myself that the age of Toryism is by
for ever; and the business of a party which can in reason propose
to itself nothing but a defensive attitude, without hope either of
plunder or honour, seems to me to have few claims on those who,
when it was in power, never were permitted to share any of the
advantages it so lavishly bestowed on fools and knaves. So I am a
very tranquil and indifferent observer.

‘Perhaps, however, much of this equanimity as to passing affairs
has arisen from the call which has been made on me to live in
the past, bestowing for so many months all the time I could
command, and all the care I have had really any heart in, upon
the manuscript remains of our dear friend. I am glad that Cadell
and the few others who have seen what I have done with these are
pleased, but I assure you none of them can think more lightly of
my own part in the matter than I do myself. My sole object is to
do him justice, or rather to let him do himself justice, by so
contriving it that he shall be as far as possible, from first to
last, his own historiographer; and I have therefore willingly
expended the time that would have sufficed for writing a dozen
books on what will be no more than the compilation of one. A stern
sense of duty--that kind of sense of it which is combined with the
feeling of his actual presence in a serene state of elevation above
all terrestrial and temporary views--will induce me to touch the
few darker points in his life and character as freely as the others
which were so predominant; and my chief anxiety on the appearance
of the book will be, not to hear what is said by the world, but
what is _thought_ by you and the few others who can really compare
the representation as a whole with the facts of the case. I shall,
therefore, desire Cadell to send you the volumes as they are
printed, though long before publication, in the confidence that
they will be kept sacred, while unpublished, to yourself and your
own household; and if you can give me encouragement on seeing the
first and second, now I think nearly out of the printer’s hands,
it will be very serviceable to me in the completion of the others.
I have waived all my own notions as to the manner of publication,
&c., in deference to the bookseller,[15] who is still so largely
our creditor, and, I am grieved to add, will probably continue to
be so for many years to come.

‘Your letters of the closing period I wish you would send to me;
and of these I am sure some use, and some good use, may be made, as
of those addressed to myself at the same time, which all, however
melancholy to compare with those of the better day, have traces of
the man. Out of these confused and painful scraps I think I can
contrive to put together a picture that will be highly touching of
a great mind shattered, but never degraded, and always to the last
noble, as his heart continued pure and warm as long as it could
beat.--Ever affectionately yours,

J. G. LOCKHART.’

We are tempted to add a short extract from another letter of Lockhart’s, because it mentions a pleasing incident in the life of the second Sir Walter Scott. He writes, 25th May 1843, that Major Scott and his wife enjoyed perfect health in India, and he adds: ‘He (Sir W. S.) tells me that hearing a Highland battalion was to pass about fifty miles off from his station (Bangalore), he rode that distance one day, and back the next, merely to hear the _skirl_ of the pipes! No doubt there would be a jolly mess for his reception besides; but I could not but be pleased with the touch of the “auld man.”’

LUCY’S FLITTIN’.

‘’Twas when the wan leaf frae the birk-tree was fa’in,
And Martinmas dowie had wound up the year,
That Lucy row’d up her wee kist wi’ her a’ in ’t,
And left her auld master and neebours sae dear.

For Lucy had serv’d i’ the Glen[16] a’ the simmer;
She cam there afore the bloom cam on the pea;[17]
An orphan was she, an’ they had been gude till her;
Sure that was the thing brought the tear to her ee.

She gaed by the stable, where Jamie was stan’in’,
Right sair was his kind heart her flittin’ to see;
Fare ye weel, Lucy! quo’ Jamie, and ran in--
The gatherin’ tears trickled fast frae her ee.

As down the burn-side she gaed slow wi’ her flittin’,
Fare ye weel, Lucy! was ilka bird’s sang;
She heard the craw sayin ’t, high on the tree sittin’,
And Robin was chirpin ’t the brown leaves amang.

O what is’t that pits my puir heart in a flutter?
And what gars the tears come sae fast to my ee?
If I wasna ettled to be ony better,
Then what gars me wish ony better to be?

I ’m just like a lammie that loses its mither,
Nae mither nor frien’ the poor lammie can see;
I fear I hae tint my bit heart a’ thegither;
Nae wonder the tear fa’s sae fast frae my ee.

Wi’ the rest o’ my claes, I hae row’d up the ribbon,
The bonnie blue ribbon that Jamie gae me;
Yestreen, when he gae me ’t, and saw I was sabbin’,
I’ll never forget the wae blink o’ his ee.

Though now he said naething but Fare ye weel, Lucy!
It made me I neither could speak, hear, nor see;
He couldna say mair but just Fare ye weel, Lucy!
Yet that I will mind till the day that I dee.

The lamb likes the gowan wi’ dew when it’s droukit;
The hare likes the brake and the braird on the lea;
But Lucy likes Jamie;--she turn’d, and she lookit;
She thought the dear place she wad never mair see!’

In publishing the ballad, Hogg added the following verse, in order, as he said, to _complete the story_; but it will be felt, we think, that he has marred the pathetic simplicity of the original, which was complete enough as a picture of the flittin’:

‘Ah, weel may young Jamie gang dowie and cheerless,
And weel may he greet on the bank o’ the burn!
His bonnie sweet Lucy, sae gentle and peerless,
Lies cauld in her grave, and will never return.’

Lockhart has truly characterised Laidlaw’s ballad as ‘a simple and pathetic picture of a poor Ettrick maiden’s feelings in leaving a service where she had been happy,’ and he adds that it has ‘long been and must ever be a favourite with all who understand the delicacies of the Scottish dialect, and the manners of the district in which the scene is laid.’ A no less flattering or discriminating notice had been previously given by a critic in the _Edinburgh Review_, who, in quoting _one_ song from the four volumes of Allan Cunningham’s _Songs of Scotland, Ancient and Modern_, selected Laidlaw’s ‘simple ditty’ as a ‘fair example of the lowly pathetic’ which would ‘go to the heart of many a village-bred Scotchman in remote regions and all conditions of society.’

THE END.

Edinburgh:
Printed by W. & R. Chambers.

FOOTNOTES

[1] This print, glazed in a black frame, was presented by Sir Adam Ferguson to my brother Robert, and it is now in my possession.--W. C.

[2] [For a number of years after the decease of Sir Walter, there were many small floating anecdotes and memorabilia of his habits, and the happy way in which he would make some pleasantry out of very ordinary occurrences. Two or three instances occur to recollection.--One day, when walking along Princes Street, Edinburgh, my brother, who accompanied him, made the remark that he was evidently well known, for many persons looked back at him on passing. ‘Oh, ay, ay,’ replied Scott jocosely; ‘more know Tom Fool than Tom Fool knows!’--The late Mr Thomas Tegg, publisher, Cheapside, having, on the occasion of visiting Scotland, ventured with a friend to call on Sir Walter at Abbotsford, was somewhat doubtful of his reception, for he had published a small book in doggerel verse, designed to bring Scott’s muse into ridicule. He was speedily relieved of his apprehensions. ‘I am sorry to say,’ said Tegg apologetically, ‘that I happen to be the publisher of _Jokeby, a Burlesque on Rokeby_.’ ‘Glad to see you, Mr Tegg,’ replied Sir Walter; ‘the more jokes the better!’--Mrs John Ballantyne, in her reminiscences of Scott, states that, besides his story-telling manner, he had another quite distinct, in which he was accustomed to utter any snatch of poetry, such as a verse of a Border ballad, or a simple but touching popular rhyme. ‘I can never forget,’ she says, ‘the awe-striking solemnity with which he pronounced an elegiac stanza inscribed on a tombstone in Melrose Abbey:

“Earth walketh on the earth
Glistering like gold;
Earth goeth to the earth
Sooner than it wold.
Earth buildeth on the earth
Palaces and towers;
Earth sayeth to the earth,
All shall be ours.”’

--On the occasion of an excursion with a friend to Dumfriesshire and Galloway, Scott’s money happened to run out; and he borrowed from his companion a pound-note at Tinwald Manse, and two pounds at the inn of Beattock Bridge. The payment of the loan became the subject of a bit of pleasantry. Returning home, he enclosed three pounds to his friend, with the following lines:

‘One at Tinwald Manse, and two at Beattock Brig,
That makes three, if Cocker’s worth a fig;
Borrow while you may, pay when you can,
And at the last you’ll die an honest man!’]

[3]

‘From Soldan Turk I this Forest wan
When the king and his men was not to see.’

In the copy printed in the _Border Minstrelsy_, this is _Soudron_--i. e., Southron or English, which I have no doubt is the proper reading.--_Aytoun._

[4] The Shepherd’s conjecture proved correct. Mr Aytoun procured his copy of the ballad from the charter-chest at Philiphaugh. The copy in the _Border Minstrelsy_ was printed from one found among the papers of Mrs Cockburn, authoress of _The Flowers of the Forest_.

[5] MS. notes by W. Laidlaw. Professor Aytoun says that one cause of his doubts as to the antiquity of _Auld Maitland_ was that it wanted a clear intelligible story and main plot, so that it could not be retained in memory for a couple of months. If the Professor (alas, now no more!) had chanced, in any of his angling excursions on the Tweed, to have fallen in with a brother of the rod, Mr Stirling, Depute Sheriff-clerk of Peebles (also now gone), he would have found at least one gentleman who could repeat the whole ballad without a break, though he had not read a line of it for more than twenty years. Hogg states explicitly that when the sheriff visited his cottage at Ettrick, his mother recited or chanted the ballad; and in a poetical address to Scott congratulating him on his elevation to the baronetcy, the Shepherd says:

‘When Maitland’s song first met your ear,
How the furled visage up did clear,
Beaming delight! though now a shade
Of doubt would darken into dread,
That some unskilled presumptuous arm
Had marred tradition’s mighty charm.
Scarce drew thy lurking dread the less
Till she, the ancient Minstreless,
With fervid voice and kindling eye,
And withered arms waving on high,
Sung forth these words in eldritch shriek,
While tears stood on thy nut-brown cheek:

“Na, we are nane o’ the lads o’ France,
Nor e’er pretend to be;
We be three lads of fair Scotland,
Auld Maitland’s sons a’ three!”

Thy fist made all the table ring--
“By ----, sir, but that is the thing!”’

[6] _Marmion_--Introduction to Canto II.

[7] He rarely made corrections on his published works, but there is one alteration worth noting in the opening of this Introduction. In the first edition he says: ‘From the remote period when the Roman deity TERMINUS retired behind the ramparts of SEVERUS,’ &c. This seemed a little inflated, and also inappropriate, for it represents Terminus as if capable of motion, though the Romans represented the god as wanting legs and arms, to shew that he was immovable; and Scott reduced the illustration to sober historical limits: ‘From the remote period when the Roman province was contracted by the ramparts of SEVERUS,’ &c.

[8] _Marmion_: Introd. to Canto II. When the poem was published, its author wrote to his friend at Blackhouse: ‘This accompanies a copy of _Marmion_, which I will see put up with my own eyes. Constable is greatly too busy to be uniformly accurate.’

[9] Letter to Hon. Mrs Stewart Mackenzie.

[10] Seaforth Papers at Brahan Castle, Ross-shire.

[11] The Burghers were a religious sect, now merged in the United Presbyterian body.

[12] Letter to Hon. Mrs Stewart Mackenzie.

[13] Lockhart also was in favour of a cairn: ‘As to monuments, if I could choose--passing Abbotsford--I should say, put a plain sitting statue of Sir W. S. on Princes Street, Edinburgh, at the south end of Castle Street, backed by the rock; and put a cairn on the Eildon Hill, that every lad might carry his stone to. As for _temples_ and _pillars_, they have been vulgarised in Edinburgh. A friend said to me: ‘Good God, what a grand thing it will be to have Sir Walter put on a level with the late Lord Melville! Let us have another pillar at the west end of George Street, by all means.’ This man is a sensible one, and was dead serious. On a level with Lord Melville, whose name will appear only in the fag-end of a note to the future history of this country, and really will be kept in memory chiefly by the pillar! Dugald Stewart and Playfair, admirable dominies both, have their temples; so I fancy will now Sir John Leslie. The Calton Hill had better be left to the schoolmasters; in a hundred years they will have covered it; but, if they please, they may keep a place in the midst for Sir John Sinclair.’--_Letter to Hon. Mrs Stewart Mackenzie._

[14] Vide _Quarterly Review_, June 1849.

[15] Mr Cadell. In the autumn of the same year, the enterprising bookseller writes to Laidlaw: ‘Strange that all the Ballantynes and Constable are gone, and I am left alone of those behind the curtain during so many critical years! Born at Cockenzie, in East Lothian, educated for business above five years in Glasgow, I came here’ [to Edinburgh] ‘a raw young man of twenty-one in the winter of 1809–10, and have cuckooed all these men out of their nests, firmly seated in which they all were at that time. And here is Lockhart telling about all of us to posterity. We will all be handed down as appendages to the great man!’ Mr Cadell died January 20, 1849, having, it is said, made about £100,000 in business, chiefly by Scott’s works. ‘Our late illustrious friend used to joke me about a Waverley Cottage or Waverley Hall: I am now rated for a palace!’ (Cadell to Laidlaw, July 1834.) Latterly, he was proprietor of the estate of Ratho, near Edinburgh.

[16] The Glen is a small mountain valley on the banks of the Quair, about four and a half miles from Innerleithen. A magnificent residence has been built on the estate by the proprietor, Charles Tennant, Esq. Vide description and engraving in Chambers’s _History of Peeblesshire_.

[17] Hogg altered this line as follows:

‘She cam there afore the flower bloom’d on the pea.’

Transcriber’s Notes

Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they were not changed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left unbalanced.