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

followed. From the cottage of Lasswade, there came a packet of manuscript ballads, complete or in draft, such as Scott had written at the time, and considered suitable to offer for such a collection. Lockhart, as is usual, is unfair to both men in the relations that followed. He first sneers at Lewis’s literary status, depreciating it below its actual level, and then makes the absurd suggestion that Scott owed him a heavy debt because the reading of Lewis’s “Ballads of Alonso the Brave etc., had rekindled effectually in his breast the spark of poetical ambition.” If Scott had needed a ‘spark’ to be ‘rekindled’ by such means he would not have been a poet at all. But, as in other instances where Lockhart represents Scott as a weak vessel whose course is steered by stronger wills, or who is inspired by stronger creative impulses than his own, examination shows it to be no more than random assertion, as entirely without external evidence as it is without inherent probability.

      Scott was the younger, though the abler man. When Lewis came to Edinburgh in the autumn, and asked him to dinner at his hotel, he was naturally pleased, or even excited at the opportunity. To have responded differently would have shown an absurd conceit, which Scott never had. That he was generous in his estimate of the abilities of others, sometimes to excess, was true throughout his life. But in this case he was in the position of a young officer, inexperienced and unproved, who is noticed by a famous and victorious general, and invited to join his staff.

      Lewis stayed for some time in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh, and Scott and he saw much of each other. Lewis visited him at Musselburgh, lodging with him in narrow quarters, while he was in training with his regiment there. They were together (probably on an invitation of Scott’s procuring) at Dalkeith House. The Scotts had improved acquaintance, during the summer at Lasswade, with the young Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch, Dalkeith House being only two or three miles down the Esk valley, as they had with the Clerks at Pennycuick, about twice as far in the opposite direction, and with other of Scott’s numberless friends whose country houses were within riding distance. It was on this occasion that Saunder’s caricature of Monk Lewis, representing him as a dark-lanterned, cloak-muffled cut-throat was passed round, with exclamations of appreciation at the likeness achieved. The Duke of Bucclench objected “Like Mat Lewis! Why that picture’s like a man,” and was disconcerted on turning round to find that Lewis was standing beside him. The remark was, of course, in derision of one who Scott describes as “the least man I ever saw, to be strictly well and neatly made.”

      Lewis went back to London before the end of the year, taking with him a translation of Goethe’s tragedy, ‘Goetz,’ which Scott had now completed. His friendly interest was successful in placing it almost immediately with a London publisher, and actually inducing him to give £25 for the first edition. This was in January. The play appeared in the following month, Lewis making a better bargain for the unknown author than he would have been likely to be able to do for himself, had stipulated for a further £25 if a second edition should be required. “I have made him” (the publisher, Bell) “distinctly understand that, if you accept so small a sum, it will be only because this is your first publication,” Lewis wrote, when sending on the offer of the first payment. So it was, on the London market.

      There was no call for a second edition. Lockhart suggests the explanation to lie in the change of literary fashion which was tiring of some of the absurdities of contemporary German literature, and rejected all indiscriminately in its revulsion of feeling. So it may have been, but no explanation is really needed. Scott’s pre-eminence was not in the translation of German drama, and the demand for such a work from a new author was not likely to be large.

      Still, its acceptance and publication was a success, through whatever influence it had been negotiated. The friendship of Mat Lewis had borne an early fruit, and it may have been the deciding argument in the resolution to visit London which was almost immediately taken. Goetz was published in February. In the following month, Mr. & Mrs. Walter Scott were in London together, sharing M. Dumergue’s hospitality. It was the first time he had been there since Janet had stopped with him on the road to Bath. He had a short period of exploration among its historical and architectural treasures; some pleasant meetings, on Lewis’s introduction, with London literary circles; others, doubtless, among Charlotte’s earlier friends. But the visit was quickly and abruptly terminated by a letter which brought the news of his father’s death.

      He had sent to Lewis, or left with him a play, The House of Aspen, which had also been written during the first year of his married life. It is said to have been brought to Kemble’s notice, and actually reached the point of rehearsal, though it was never acted in public. It is unlikely that it would have had any popular success. Its chief interest is in its lyrics; and their importance is of a negative kind. They show that the almost flawless perfection of form which Scott ultimately attained in this class of composition, a perfection which is so complete as to appear effortless, was not reached without practice, by the path of comparative failure, which is the common experience.

      CHAPTER XX.

      Walter Scott senior died of apoplexy in his seventieth year. He had survived several strokes, beneath which body and mind had gradually given way, and the task of nursing him had been a heavy strain upon his wife and invalid daughter during the previous winter. The manner of his death was that which was most usual at that time in the class to which he belonged. The fact that he survived to the completion of the seventh decade, particularly when consideration is given to the sedentary life he lived in contrast to that of his Border ancestors, gives some support to the abstemious reputation that he enjoyed. His widow, as is common in the family records of this period, survived him for nearly twenty healthy and happy years, modern prejudice would say in spite of the large family that she had borne in her youth. We must explain that as we please; but the habit of taking alcoholic refreshment in large and continual quantities appears to have been masculine rather than feminine, and paralytic deaths among the women were proportionately infrequent.

      Mr. Scott left a sufficient capital sum to provide his widow with an income of about £300 a year, on which she lived in a quiet and comfortable independence, refusing resolutely to have it supplemented in the days of her son’s prosperity. Beyond this, Tom had the business, and though the residue which remained for division among the other children was less than had been expected, it doubtless eased the position of all at the time, though with a finality which closed any future expectations from the source on which they had been used to rely.

      The home of a generation in George’s Square was closed and dismantled. Walter and Charlotte offered his mother and sister the hospitality of Lasswade, in which narrow quarters they remained together till the autumn came, and the cottage was abandoned for the winter months in the usual way, though somewhat later than usual, for it was here in October that Charlotte’s first baby—Charlotte Sophia—was born.

      It was natural, during a summer in which Mrs. Scott and Anne were with them at Lasswade, and Charlotte was approaching motherhood, that Walter did not wander far from his own home. He reduced his annual Liddesdale raid with Sheriff Shortreed to the limit of a single week—the conditions of life in the desolate moorland country being too primitive for Charlotte to have been his companion on that occasion—and they improved acquaintance with many friends in the Eskdale district. There was a short visit to Robert Scott at Kelso, during which a printing order was given to James Ballantyne, of which more must be said. There was a visit also to Bothwell Castle, at the invitation of Lady Frances, the Duke of Buccleuch’s sister, who had just married Lord Douglas, and who did not allow her marriage to break the friendship which had been formed during the previous summer. There was even a proposal during this visit that the Scotts should give up the Lasswade cottage, and accept the free tenancy of a little house which had been built within the ruins of Craignethan Castle, which was the property of Lord Douglas. The offer, and the fact that it was not rejected, show how close and cordial was the friendship already established with the Buccleuch family. That it was afterwards abandoned was due to other developments to which we must come in due order. It was a year of many events, and in which the seeds of the future were freely sown.

      It was a year of importance also in Scott’s literary history, for it saw an output of original ballads in which we may observe him gradually evolving the forms of creative art in which he was to show himself as a pioneer of literature, doing that which had never been done before, and