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

of Mr. Dundas was that of an assistant surgeon, and that would be useless to Mr. Leyden, as it could only be given to a qualified man. At least, that was assumed. Mr. Leyden thought differently. How soon would he have to qualify? He must be ready in six months. Very well. That would do for him. He took instantly to medical study, and was a qualified surgeon in time to join the ship to which he had been appointed. He went out with a letter of introduction from Scott to Charles Charpentier, and doubtless with others which Scott’s interest had secured. In Scott’s letter, he makes some mention of his own circumstances, and of the success of the Minstrelsy, without boasting, but with some natural elation. John Leyden had seven years in India, becoming famous, in that brief period, for Oriental scholarship, before the climate killed him.

      Scott laid a wreath of verse on his friend’s grave when he wrote of

      “Scenes sung by him, who sings no more:

      His brief and bright career is o’er,

      And mute his tuneful strains;

      Quenched is his lamp of varied lore,

      That loved the light of song to pour;

      A distant and a deadly shore

      Has Leyden’s cold remains.”

      But this is looking too far ahead. In the autumn of 1800, John Leyden was concentrating upon preparation for his medical examination, and the Scotts gave him the quiet hospitality of Lasswade in which to study. We know enough of Leyden’s circumstances to suppose that it was an unrequited kindness: enough of his character to know that it would be received with gratitude.

      Scott had more money this year than had been under his control at any previous period, and we see that it is already being used for the benefit of those around him. In 1808, before the time of his greatest prosperity, he wrote with truth that he had never cared overmuch for money. There would never be a time when he would have that which his friends (and some others) would not be free to share.

      Joseph Ritson was a visitor to Lasswade while Leyden was staying there. Ritson was a man of strong and difficult individuality, the nature of which must not be taken to have been fairly drawn by Lockhart, whose prejudice is too strong to avoid caricature. Ritson was a scholar, an antiquarian, a loser of old poetry. He was best known for his assaults upon Bishop Percy’s editing of the Reliques. It is a controversy which does not concern us now. The right was not all on one side. Lockhart evidently preferred that of the bishop. He calls Ritson a ‘narrow-minded, sour, dogmatical little word-catcher’, who was ‘utterly incapable of sympathising with any of Scott’s ‘higher views’.

      It is hardly judicial language, and must be justified, if at all, by the further damnations that Ritson was a vegetarian, and did not like Scotsmen. He was certainly a man of difficult temper, and it was regarded as a triumph of Scott’s diplomacy in correspondence that he had enlisted his help. It surprised George Ellis, with whom Scott had also been in correspondence, since their mutual friend, Richard Heber, had returned to London.

      Ritson came to Lasswade, and, on Lockhart’s own statement, it was Leyden who played the clown, having a plate of raw meat brought in from the kitchen, and eating it, not from choice, but with the intention of horrifying his hosts’ visitor. This exhibition, according to Lockhart, produced glances of “exquisite ruefulness” from Ritson, which is an improbable reaction.

      Gillies, in his Reminisciences of Sir Walter Scott, recounts a somewhat similar scene. He called at Lasswade, and found Scott and Will Erskine starting out for a walk, which he joined. They left John Leyden and Mrs. Scott in the house, where Ritson was expected. They came back to find that he had both come and gone. Mrs. Scott, in a forgetful moment, had served him with some cold beef. Ritson had rejected it in a way which Leyden thought rude, and a violent quarrel had followed, as a result of which Ritson had left the house. Scott heard the tale, and did not look pleased, but on Leyden becoming excited in self-justification, he put it aside with a jest.

      As Lockhart tells it, Leyden is justified by the fact that vegetarians should not expect to be treated with ordinary courtesy. They are non compos mentis. Had not Leyden ‘first tried to correct him by ridicule’? To which ‘the madman’s’ only response was to become more violent, instead of showing the gratitude which such an attitude should arouse? After that, if Leyden threatened to wring his neck, and didn’t do it, it only shows how mild-mannered he really was.

      These anecdotes show Leyden on his worst side, as one who was born a boor, and may raise a doubt as to what was the atmosphere of the thatched cottage at Lasswade, which could give hospitality to such inmates. But Gillies, who tells the tale, and who looked with the eyes of a brother barrister, and a scholar accustomed to the amenities of city life, gives us this picture also: “In approaching the cottage I was struck with the exceeding air of neatness that prevailed around. The hand of tasteful cultivation had been there, and all methods employed to convert an ordinary thatched cottage into a handsome and comfortable abode.”

      But the decision that it must be left, whatever amount of loving care had been spent upon it, would soon have to be reluctantly taken. It was during the next summer that the Lord-Lieutenant of Selkirkshire addressed a formal complaint to Scott that he was doing less than justice to the duties of the official post he held. The remonstrance was not of an urgent character, but it was not of Scott’s disposition to disregard it. During these years his absorption in the preparation of the Minstrelsy for the press, his other literary and his legal work, and the military duties which he had undertaken, must have left little time for those of a sheriff to be performed. He replied, very properly, with an expression of regret, and an assurance that there should be no cause for future complaint.

      To fulfil this undertaking, the natural course was to arrange that, as he must still remain in Edinburgh during the winter months, his summer residence should be in the county where his duties lay.

      Besides, the two babies grew, and there would be a third by the time that this correspondence took place. (Anne was born in February l803). Yet, to the Scott’s, to leave Lasswade would not be a welcome decision. It was the first country home that they had had. It had been theirs for six very happy years of a growing prosperity. They had spent much upon it, having made it the home it was. But it was a step which could not be much longer deferred....

      When Gillies called at the cottage, on the occasion already mentioned, and went walking with Scott and Erskine, they took him to see the ruins of Roslin, and he has recorded his memory that Scott’s foot slipped on the crag-top, and that he “must have been killed” but that he dislodged a hazel-tree which went down with him, the two arriving safely at the foot of the cliff together. He rose, he says, “with a hearty laugh,” and called from below to know whether they would dare to descend in the same way.

      Such incidents tend to be exaggerated in reminiscence, but there is a large body of testimony to Scott’s physical and sometimes almost reckless daring, and the buoyant attitude with which he faced mischance or danger. Gillies says that, at this point, “he retained in features and form an impress of that elasticity and youthful vivacity which he used to complain wore off when he was forty, and by his own account was exchanged for the plodding heaviness of an operose student. He had now something of a boyish gaiety of look, and in person was tall, slim and extremely active.”

      Doubtless, as the years passed, he insensibly lessened, little by little, the strenuous activities of his earlier years. Doubtless he sat longer at his desk, or, by insensible degrees, longer at the table while the wine passed and the talk went on. Doubtless, his weight insensibly increased, and his steps shortened. But those who saw him long after his fortieth year noticed the same buoyancy of temperament, the same tireless activity, the same readiness to take the risk, on foot or horseback, either of leap or fall.

      CHAPTER XXV.

      In the beginning of April 1803, Mr. and Mrs. Scott went up for a second time to London together. John Leyden had now taken his medical diploma, and gone up at an earlier date, awaiting his sailing instructions. Dates of sailing were, in those days, of a vague uncertainty. They were anxious to see him before his departure, and they probably started as soon as Charlotte felt equal to the long coach journey, which was at that time a rather formidable enterprise, her third