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

of a century, but the constancy and strength of Scott’s affections, and his enduring memory of this thwarted passion, make it almost impossible that he should have written such a paragraph without consciousness of his own experience.

      Late in life, he said that he had never faced any serious trouble without being vexed in dreams by memories of this emotional disaster of earlier days. He also expressed a wish that its details should not be probed, though he feared that that was too much to hope. There is a border of decency in the investigation of the intimacies of those who are dead which it is easy to overpass, and which is passed very frequently. That they should be less protected than the living cannot be readily allowed by any logical or generous mind, and this applies more particularly to those who are related to, or who come into some contact with men of an enduring celebrity, but who have done nothing themselves to challenge publicity, or deserve its penalties. It is equally true that a biography which is insincere, or deceptive, is about as worthless, if not actively pernicious, as a book can be. Most biographies should not be written at all. The material does not exist, or cannot properly be brought into evidence. It is as though we were to stage a trial at which some essential witnesses would be absent, and the evidence of others would be abruptly terminated before its climax; at which no one could be cross-examined and no one would be on oath; and then bring in a casually-confident verdict, which a bench of experienced judges might decline to do.

      Scott showed a truer sense of historical responsibility when he refused to write a life of Mary Stuart, at a time when money was a vital need, and though he must have known that it would have an enormous popularity, because he did not feel that he understood sufficiently the events of that gallant and tragic life. Possibly, had anyone suggested to his mind that the Casket letters were forgeries, he might have come to a different conclusion, and the result would have enriched our literature.

      The character of most authors is sufficiently (and always most reliably) indicated by the work they leave us. The excuse (if it be needed) for considering the life of Scott is that which he would have applied himself to any theme that might come before him—that it is of an explicit nobility; a tale that it is worth while to tell.

      The suggestion that he had a cause of grievance against Miss Stuart does not come from him, and there is no evidence to support it which endures critical examination.

      It is her abiding honour that Walter Scott loved her with that quality of love which will survive hope, and which endured to his last hour, and we can be content to leave her name untarnished.

      He was too great of soul to suppose that this love was inconsistent with that which made sunlight in his life for many after years: too great either to conceal it from Charlotte Charpentier, or any who had his confidence, or to make it cause of complaint, or excuse for bitterness. And it was not without its reward in the control and conduct of his own life. However we may estimate the extent or directions in which it impulsed his literary work, there can be no doubt that the thought of Williamina Stuart inspired his determination to enter the Faculty of Advocates within the minimum possible period, and that when he put aside a score of contending interests for the steady uncongenial study of those two strenuous years

      “’Twas she for whose bright eyes was won

      The listed field at Askalon.”

      CHAPTER XVI.

      The same October (1796) that saw the final defeat of Scott’s effort to win Miss Stuart, saw his first published attempt at victory in the field of literature.

      He published a thin quarto volume containing the version of Leonore (“William and Helen”) which Jane Cranston caused to be set in type six months earlier, and The Wild Huntsman,. both being translations from Burger, a copy of whose ballads in the original had been presented to him by a German lady who had married Hugh Scott, the chief of his own (Harden) branch of the family.

      This brings us to another of Scott’s innumerable friendships, and to another of Lockhart’s alleged ‘influences’.

      That Walter Scott would visit Hugh Scott at Mertoun was a certain thing. That Mrs. Hugh, the daughter of Count Bruhl, the Saxon ambassador in London, should take an interest in a young kinsman of her husband, who had learnt the language of her native country, and was translating its literature, was natural also. And it was absolutely certain that Scott would use the opportunity to learn from her all that the stores of her own mind, the experiences of her own life, could supply. He appears to have had the gift of pillaging the minds of others in such a manner that they were left with a pleasant satisfaction in the thought of how much they knew, and how much they had been able to help the pleasant and diffident young man with whom they had been conversing. It is curious, but not unnatural, that Scott seems to have shared their belief quite frequently. It had some truth. The mental wares which had been spread on the table between them had been those of their own minds. They did not realise that those which he had already accumulated were a hundred times more than theirs would ever be. They asked nothing from him. He asked information from them so deferentially that we are reminded of ants gently stroking aphidian abdomens, so that their milk shall flow freely.

      Mrs. Hugh Scott, daughter of the Dowager-Countess of Egremont (think of that! Lockhart asks us to do so), met Walter Scott when he was twenty-five, and thought him very young for his years. She knew English better than he. They agreed about that. She could correct his bad rhymes; the Scotticisms of his conversations, which would otherwise (doubtless) invade his youthful efforts at literary expression. He once spoke about the “little two dogs” and she was able to explain that “two little dogs” was preferred in the best society. He was duly grateful. She spread her tail in the sun.

      She did more than this. She “set him right in a thousand little trifles,” as she naturally could, being the “first lady of fashion” to “take him up”. It is an unconscious comedy as Lockhart tells it, but he may do justice to neither.

      When we think of the verbal loveliness of Rosabelle and other lyrics which must have been written at or very soon after this period, and all the experimental beauties of The Lay of the Last Minstrel, we may smile a little at this picture of uncouth diffidence being instructed by this German-born lady in the elements of the English tongue; but Scott doubtless did learn something from her, and the lady was happy. It is more blessed to give than to receive.

      Lockhart has supplied his hero with a “mentor” in Will Clerk, a “monitor” in Will Erskine, and now a “lady of fashion” to complete the preparation for his exalted destiny, after which he should go far.

      But, for the moment, he didn’t.

      Friends who knew him in Edinburgh talked of the book and gave it generous praise, which may not have exceeded sincerity, because they regarded it in relation to the riches of his own mind, of which they already knew. But London literary circles declined to be excited. In fact, they declined to buy it at all. Lockhart is sure that “real lovers of poesy” saw that “no one but a poet could have transfused the daring imagery of the German in a style so free, bold, masculine, and full of life.” Perhaps it was so, and perhaps they did. Lockhart’s team of adjectives are somewhat of the same colour, and go no further than to suggest that the translations were of a vigorous quality. So they were. They had energy, and showed some skill in craftsmanship. But they were not his subjects: they were not his inventions: vitally, they were not his. They were more or less capable exercises in verse: they were not poetry at all. It was a time at which everyone was translating Burger. Some did it better than Scott, and most could have been better occupied. If he could do no better than that, he might give up trying, and it would be no loss to the world.

      He took the failure with serenity. Beaten, for the moment, both in love and literature, he made no complaint. He went on practising the art of verse: he went on with his legal business: he redoubled his efforts to organise a regiment of volunteer horse.

      And in this same Autumn of 1796, while the preparations for Williamina’s wedding were being pushed forward at Invermay, Scott commenced another of his life-long friendships. A young man, James Skene of Rubislaw, who had just come back from Saxony, where he had been staying for several years, no doubt first attracted his attention owing to his interest in German literature. He wanted to know many things that James should be able to tell