The Life of Sir Walter Scott: A Biography. S. Fowler Wright

the Jedburgh Court session was over, Scott was on the way to Liddesdale once again.

      CHAPTER XIII.

      However vague Scott’s ultimate ambitions may have been to his own mind, or however privately he may have kept them there, his literary interests were becoming increasingly evident to those among whom he associated, and may have done actual harm to his professional prospects. Men are seldom willing to credit their neighbour with two separate excellencies. Of the Speculative Club, he had before this time accepted, one after another, the triple offices of librarian, secretary and treasurer. In fact, it pivoted upon his personality.

      To suggest that he neglected any opportunity of engaging in the profession he had adopted, or that he failed to give good service to those who briefed him, would go not merely beyond evidence, but beyond probability, remembering the capacity for self-discipline that he had shown in his legal studies, and his stubborn resolution, now known to many, that he would marry the heiress of Invermay. But briefs came irregularly, the passion for poetry, for history, for antiquarian research—they were always with him. While legal practice halted, as, in the experience of most young barristers, it is apt to do, what could he do better than pursue them? The Advocates’ Library was in the vaults beneath the Parliament House. It had many old and curious manuscripts which he was expert in deciphering. He became one of its Curators, which was an honour reserved for Advocates who were conspicuous for literary rather than forensic triumphs. During the considerable portions of the year when the Courts were not sitting, he resumed his wanderings with a systematic diligence against which his now-invalid father protested even more vigorously than he had done in earlier days. To him, at least, it appeared a dissipation of energy which militated against the legal career of a brilliant son. It was a view for which some argument could be urged. Probably the older man was disappointed that his progress was not more rapid during these first years. He had expected much. Now he looked rather irritably for the cause, if not of comparative failure, of delayed success. His son kept steadily on the track of a destiny which may—or may not—have been clear to his own mind. He was not insensitive of his father’s feelings, but he held to his own course. Christian Rutherford was a sympathetic confidant.

      As his father’s health failed, the house at George’s Square took on a tone of increased austerity. Tom left it—marrying Elizabeth McCulloch, a Galway girl, with one of the usual ancient Scottish pedigrees. She lived to survive him, and Walter’s children. ‘One of the best and wisest and most agreeable women I have ever met’, Lockhart called her, writing from the standpoint of the generation that followed. We may notice again that the Scotts chose their wives well.

      So Tom, doubtless drawing a larger income from the attorney’s office than Walter had yet in sight, set up his own housekeeping, and the only two others who were still at home were the youngest brother, Daniel, not very anxious to be doing anything in particular, nor likely to succeed at it if he did, and the half-invalid, Anne.

      Whenever the Court was not sitting in Edinburgh, it would be certain that Walter would not be at home. He might be at Tullibody, the seat of George Abercromby’s grandfather, Sir Ralph, listening to that resolute old gentleman’s tale of how he once visited Rob Roy in his own caravan. (He went on the track of his missing cattle, saw them hanging by the heels where they had been slaughtered for the nourishment of the robber gang, was hospitably allowed to share the meal which his meadows had provided, made a blackmail bargain which protected him from a repetition of such calls, and came back safely.) Or he might be at Newton, hearing tales of the ’45; or with Buchanan at Cambusmore; or with Lord Kaines at Blair-Drummond, or with John Ramsay at Ochtertyre.

      Or he might have joined William Clerk at Craighall, where the Rattrays, who were Clerk’s relatives, would entertain them together. He wandered far in Highlands and Lowlands, and everywhere he went he gathered local colour, character, or anecdote which would appear in the publications of later years.

      During the period that he was in attendance at the Edinburgh Court he gained another reputation, not characteristic of most barristers, or lame or literary men. It was a time of political unrest, and Scott’s interests were too catholic and too keen for him to remain outside its resulting turmoils. The Bolshevism of those days was not at a comfortable distance, so that men could be coldly and remotely curious as to whether it had murdered millions, or engage in academic discussions concerning its five-year plans. It was at the door of England, looking over the narrow seas. It shook Europe. It seemed to many to open a pit of anarchy into which Christianity and civilisation must go down together: must go surely down, unless it could be saved by English courage—and English gold. To others, it was the dawn of a new hope. Liberty and equality, comfort and affluence, were offered to a world of slaves.

      To appreciate the bitter controversies of those times, to be fair to those who took part in them on whatever side, we must; wipe out from our minds all knowledge of the events that followed. We must look at the blackness of the approaching storm, not knowing that we shall outlast it, or that it may drift away.

      It is common to misrepresent Scott as a bigoted Tory, whose politics were of a reactionary obtuseness; one who would have been called a “die-hard” had he lived today. It is a judgement which is profoundly stupid. His attitude toward political questions was consistent from youth to age, because it sprang from certain basic conceptions of the nature of man, and the nature and purpose of human life, which he may or may not have analysed, but which were fundamental in character. He believed in liberty. He believed in order, as a condition of its existence. He believed in the inequality of men. He believed in nobility, concrete as well as abstract. But it must be a nobility of service always. No other is worthy to endure. No other will endure. That was the political creed of a man whose genius may have been more widely and sanely sympathetic than that of any other European poet except Dante—Shakespeare certainly not excepted. It was the creed of one who sympathised with and understood equally the feelings of the hunters and the horses, the dogs and the deer. Ellen Douglas, carelessly emptying her purse in the guardroom—

      “with the grace

      And open bounty of her race”

      —symbolises this ideal, as does De Vaux, who

      “of gold had never need

      Save to purvey him arms and steed.

      The only gold he ever stored

      Inlays his helm and hilts his sword.”

      It may be no more (and no less) than the ideal of feudalism, from which feudalism fell away. But when it fell away, itself fell. Its central truth is the kernel of Christianity: “If any man would be first among you, let him be the servant of all.”

      When in his later years he would give entertainment to the villagers congregated beneath the shadow of Abbotsford—who if we probe the position deeply enough we find to be living mainly at his expense, on the proceeds of the Waverley novels—he would have no pride in what he did, but only a humility of wonder that others could be grateful for so light a cause.

      And when confronted by the certainty of his own ruin, his first thoughts will be for others, and almost his first for the protection of those humbler dependants who had—

      “Found shelter underneath his shield.”

      When, in his last years, he will drive through the industrial districts of Lancashire, and observe the “stern sullen unwashed artificers”, thrown out of work by the financial crisis of the time, crowding frowningly around the vehicle, his sympathies will not be with his own class. He will write that night in his Journal, ‘God’s justice is requiting, and will further requite—’ not those who were threatening England with revolution, but those, of whatever class, who could make wealth out of the poverty of their fellow-men.

      His ideal of aristocracy was not one of wealth, but of conduct. An aristocracy of noblesse oblige, and by that motto he believed that it could be established impregnably.

      It was with such instincts, such beliefs, such ideals, and with an observation of the state of all grades of the society around him which few, if any, of his age and time can have equalled, that Walter Scott faced the political disorders and listened to the conflicting theories which were discussed around him.