Chapter XXX: The Chronicles of the Canongate and Other Tales

The remaining tales of the Waverley Novels require only brief mention. There is but little in them of the 'Country of Sir Walter Scott,' and scarcely more of the author himself. They are the final efforts of a man whose extraordinary buoyancy of youthful spirit is at last beginning to sink beneath a burden too great for human endurance. To begin at fifty-five the uninspiring task of 'paying for dead horses' the vast sum of £117,000, an amount which few men are able to earn by honest labour in all the days of their lives, required a superb courage which only Scott's high sense of honour could have sustained. Scarcely had the resolve been made when a second crushing blow fell with a force more stunning than the first. His beloved wife, the companion of thirty years, was taken away at the hour of his greatest need. She who could relieve the tedium of his toil by slipping quietly into the room to see if the fire burned, or to ask some kind question, was no longer present to comfort him. He felt a paralyzing sense of loneliness and old age, which even the devotion of his daughter Anne could not relieve. To continue the awful grind of writing for money--for something which he could not enjoy nor save for any cherished purpose, but must surrender at once to others--required an almost superhuman exertion of will power. His health began to fail. Headaches and insomnia, added to rheumatism, {388} caused him great distress. His early lameness became intensified and made walking so painful that he had to abandon what had been his favourite form of exercise. The once vigorous frame had prematurely worn out under the strain imposed upon it. Scott had become an aged man at less than threescore years. Yet in these years of disappointment, grief, and physical pain he produced an amount of work of which an ordinary man might well be proud had it represented a lifetime of toil. From 1826, the year of Constable's failure, to 1831, this man of iron will produced no less than forty[1] volumes, besides fifteen important reviews, essays, etc., and in addition supervised the publication of his complete prose writings and the Waverley Novels, preparing for the latter a series of exhaustive introductions and notes.

I have anticipated a little by devoting a separate chapter to 'The Fair Maid of Perth' which appeared as {389} the Second Series of the 'Chronicles of the Canongate' in 1828. The 'First Series' was published in 1827 and comprised 'The Two Drovers,' 'The Highland Widow,' and 'The Surgeon's Daughter.' To many the chief interest lies in the Introduction. When the work was first projected, Scott thought of preserving his incognito by conceiving the tales to be the work of one Chrystal Croftangry, an elderly gentleman who had taken quarters for a time within the Sanctuary, as the immediate vicinity of Holyrood was called. Here, as in the famous Alsatia of London, debtors were safe from arrest. Scott at one time feared that the importunities of a certain relentless creditor might force him to take refuge in the Sanctuary. On November 1, 1827, he made this entry in his Journal: 'I waked in the night and lay two hours in feverish meditation ... I suppose that I, the Chronicler of the Canongate, will have to take up my residence in the Sanctuary, unless I prefer the more airy residence of the Colton Jail, or a trip to the Isle of Man.' Fortunately this creditor was silenced by Scott's generous friend, Sir William Forbes, who privately paid the claim out of his own pocket.[2]

There is much in Mr. Croftangry's lengthy biography to remind one of Sir Walter himself. He finds pleasure in visiting the Portobello sands to see the cavalry drill, suggesting at once the young quartermaster of the Edinburgh Volunteers, who rode a black charger up and down the sands while he composed some of the most spirited stanzas of 'Marmion.' He delights to spend the wet mornings with his book and the pleasant ones in strolling upon the Salisbury Crags--just as Walter, {390} the high-school boy and college student loved to do. In Mrs. Bethune Baliol, the genial old lady who assists Mr. Croftangry in his literary speculations, we have a kindly reference to a dear friend of the author--Mrs. Murray Keith, who died at eighty-two years of age, 'one of the few persons whose spirits and cleanliness, and freshness of mind and body made old age lovely and desirable.'

The volume is still more interesting because it contains Scott's first printed acknowledgment of the authorship of the Waverley Novels and gives an insight into some of the original suggestions of both characters and scenery. It also contains an account of the Theatrical Fund Dinner held in Edinburgh in February, 1827, in which Scott was publicly referred to as the author of the Waverley Novels and acknowledged in the presence of three hundred gentlemen the secret which he had hitherto confided to only twenty.

'The Highland Widow' is a story of that wild but beautiful portion of Argyllshire of which Loch Awe is the chief attraction. Dumbarton Castle, where the widow's unfortunate son bravely paid with his life for the mistaken teachings and indiscretions of his mother, is a conspicuous object on the right bank of the Clyde, a few miles below Glasgow. It stands on a high rock, the circumference of which at the base is fully a mile. It is still maintained as one of the defences of Scotland, in accordance with the Treaty of Union.

'The Two Drovers' is an excellent short story picturing the life of those men who drove their cattle from the {391} Highlands about Doune, to the markets of Lincolnshire or elsewhere in England, making the entire journey on foot, sleeping with their droves at night in all kinds of weather and enduring many hardships.

'The Surgeon's Daughter,' though it opens in one of the midland counties of Scotland, is chiefly a story of India, and the scenery is therefore not a part of Scott's Country, for he never saw it. The good old doctor, Gideon Grey, was, however, an old friend who lived in Selkirk, Dr. Ebenezer Clarkson, one of those hard-working country doctors who often combine, 'under a blunt exterior, professional skill and enthusiasm, intelligence, humanity, courage, and science.'

'Anne of Geierstein,' though sharply criticized by James Ballantyne and regarded by the author himself as a task which he hated, is nevertheless a wonderful work of imagination, in which the old-time genius is clearly manifest. Lockhart points out the power, which Scott retained in advanced years, of depicting 'the feelings of youth with all their original glow and purity,' and says that nowhere has the author 'painted such feelings more deliciously' than in certain passages of 'Anne of Geierstein.' He assigns as a reason the fact that Scott always retained in memory the events of his own happy life, and besides 'he was always living over again in his children, young at heart whenever he looked on them.'

Though admittedly erroneous in certain historical details, the volume contains some wonderful descriptions of scenery. Scott never visited Switzerland, where {392} the chief interest of the story lies, but seemed to have an instinctive grasp of its charm, which he accounted for by saying, 'Had I not the honour of an intimate personal acquaintance with every pass in the Highlands; and if that were not enough, had I not seen pictures and prints _galore_?' The story opens at the village of Lucerne, and the Lake of the Four Cantons, beneath the shadow of the awe-inspiring Mount Pilatus. Those who have travelled from this point to Bâle, and thence down the Rhine to Strasburg, should have a fairly good idea of the scenery of the novel--better, perhaps, than the author himself. Charles of Burgundy, whose character and career had made a strong impression upon Scott through the pages of Philippe de Comines, appears once more, and the novel closes with his defeat at Nancy and tragic death in a half-frozen swamp, the victim of the traitorous Campo-basso. The story of King René and the events at Aix in Provence was an afterthought, woven into the tale at the suggestion of James Skene, who supplied the necessary details.

'Count Robert of Paris' is a tale of Constantinople, a city which Scott had not visited. The difficulties under which it was written may be judged from such expressions in the Journal as these: 'My pen stammers egregiously and I write horridly incorrect'; 'The task of pumping my brain becomes inevitably harder'; 'My bodily strength is terribly gone; perhaps my mental also.' The spirit which enabled him to persevere in spite of Cadell and Ballantyne, who were again criticizing severely, may be seen from these lines: 'But I will fight it out if I can. It would argue too great an attachment {393} of consequence to my literary labours to sink under critical clamour. Did I know how to begin, _I would begin again this very day, although I knew I should sink at the end._'

In spite of the doctor's advice, he kept on with his dictation--for he could no longer use the pen--and finished 'Count Robert' amidst a frightful sea of troubles. He had suffered three or four strokes of apoplexy or palsy, and had experienced daily tortures from cramp, rheumatism, and increasing lameness. Yet in the midst of all this affliction he thought of his creditors and said repeatedly to Lockhart, 'I am very anxious to be done, one way or another, with this "Count Robert," and a little story about the "Castle Dangerous"'--thus to the last continuing the old trick of starting a new story before its predecessor was finished. He even resumed his youthful practice of going in search of material, and actually undertook an excursion to Douglas in Lanarkshire, where he examined attentively the old ivy-covered fragment of the original castle, the ruins of the old church, and the crypt of the Douglases, filled with leaden coffins. He even talked with the people of the village, after his old-time fashion, and gathered such legends as they could remember. He was now on familiar ground and speedily finished the latest story, bringing 'Count Robert' to a close about the same time. The two were published in November, 1831, as the Fourth Series of 'Tales of My Landlord.' These volumes completed the literary labours of Sir Walter, except that he continued to work a little at his notes and introductions, but at last he took the advice of his friends and agreed to do no more work of an exacting {394} nature. A journey to the Continent followed, including a visit to Malta, but in the following year he was glad to return to his beloved Abbotsford. On the 21st of September, 1832, lying in the dining-room of the mansion which his industry and courage had saved to his family, and listening to the rippling of his beloved river Tweed, the brave and honourable as well as honoured writer, breathed his last. He had fought a good fight and died in the belief that he had won. And so he had. For although the debt was not entirely paid, the subsequent sale of copyrights realized enough to satisfy all claims. Scott's sense of honour and superb courage had won a glorious victory.

[1] The volumes were:--

Woodstock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 volumes

Life of Napoleon Buonaparte . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Chronicles of the Canongate, First Series,--comprising
The Two Drovers, The Highland Widow, and The Surgeon's
Daughter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Tales of a Grandfather . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Chronicles of the Canongate, Second Series--The Fair
Maid of Perth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Anne of Geierstein . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

A History of Scotland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

The Doom of Devorgoil and Auchindrane . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Tales of My Landlord, Fourth Series,--Count Robert of
Paris, and Castle Dangerous . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
__
40

Three short stories, which Ballantyne objected to including in the Canongate Chronicles, were printed in The Keepsake. These were 'My Aunt Margaret's Mirror,' 'The Tapestried Chamber,' and the 'Death of the Laird's Jock.'

[2] See Chapter V, _Rokeby_, page 95.

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