[177] This hint was taken up in _Count Robert of Paris_.--J.G.L.
[178] James Ballantyne gives an interesting account of an interview a dozen years before this time, when "Tom Telltruth" had a somewhat delicate task to perform:--
"_The Lord of the Isles_ was by far the least popular of the series, and Mr. Scott was very prompt at making such discoveries. In about a week after its publication he took me into his library, and asked me what the people were saying about _The Lord of the Isles_. I hesitated, much in the same manner that Gil Blas might be supposed to do when a similar question was put by the Archbishop of Grenada, but he very speedily brought the matter to a point--'Come, speak out, my good fellow, what has put it in your head to be on ceremony with me? But the result is in one word--disappointment!' My silence admitted his inference to its fullest extent. His countenance certainly did look rather blank for a few seconds (for it is a singular fact, that before the public, or rather the booksellers, gave _their_ decision he no more knew whether he had written well or ill, than whether a die, which he threw out of a box, was to turn out a sise or an ace). However, he almost instantly resumed his spirits and expressed his wonder rather that his popularity had lasted so long, than that it should have given way at last. At length, with a perfectly cheerful manner, he said, 'Well, well, James, but you know we must not droop--for you know we can't and won't give over--we must just try something else, and the question is, what it's to be?' Nor was it any wonder he spoke thus, for he could not fail to be unconsciously conscious, if I dare use such a term, of his own gigantic, and as yet undeveloped, powers, and was somewhat under forty years old. I am by no means sure whether he then alluded to _Waverley_, as if he had mentioned it to me for the first time, for my memory has greatly failed me touching this, or whether he alluded to it, as in fact appears to have been the case, as having been commenced and laid aside several years before, but I well recollect that he consulted me with his usual openness and candour respecting his probability of succeeding as a novelist, and I confess my expectations were not very sanguine. He saw this and said, 'Well, I don't see why I should not succeed as well as other people. Come, faint heart never won fair lady--let us try.' I remember when the work was put into my hands, I could not get myself to think much, of the Waverley Honour scenes, but to my shame be it spoken, when he had reached the exquisite scenes of Scottish manners at Tully-Veolan, I thought them, and pronounced them, vulgar! When the success of the book so utterly knocked me down as a man of taste, all that the good-natured Author observed was, 'Well, I really thought you might be wrong about the Scotch. Why, Burns had already attracted universal attention to all about Scotland, and I confess I could not see why I should not be able to keep the flame alive, merely because I wrote in prose in place of rhyme.'"--_Memorandum_.
[179] This was a club-house on the London plan, in Princes Street [No. 54], a little eastward from the Mound. On its dissolution soon afterwards, Sir W. was elected by acclamation into the elder Society, called the _New Club_, who had then their house in St. Andrew Square [No. 3], and since 1837 in Princes Street [No. 85].
[180] Mr. Skene's house was No. 126 Princes Street. Scott's written answer has been preserved:--
"MY DEAR SKENE,--A thousand thanks for your kind proposal. But I am a solitary monster by temper, and must necessarily couch in a den of my own. I should not, I assure you, have made any ceremony in accepting your offer had it at all been like to suit me.
"But I must make an arrangement which is to last for years, and perhaps for my lifetime; therefore the sooner I place myself on my footing it will be so much the better.--Always, dear Skene, your obliged and faithful, W. SCOTT."
[181] Pope's _Imitation of Horace_, Bk. ii Sat. 6.--J.G.L.
[182] These Letters appeared in the _Edinburgh Weekly Journal_ in February and March 1826. "They were then collected into a pamphlet, and ran through numerous editions; in the subsequent discussions in Parliament, they were frequently referred to; and although an elaborate answer by the then Secretary of the Admiralty, Mr. Croker, attracted much notice, and was, by the Government of the time, expected to neutralise the effect of the northern lucubrations--the proposed measure, as regarded Scotland, was ultimately abandoned, and that result was universally ascribed to Malachi Malagrowther."--Scott's _Misc. Works_, vol. xxi.
[183] _Winter's Tale_, Act iv. Sc. 2, slightly altered.
[184] The late Mr. Williamson of Cardrona in Peeblesshire, was a strange humorist, of whom Sir Walter told many stories. The allusion here is to the anecdote of the _Leetle Anderson_ in the first of _Malachi_'s Epistles.:--See Scott's _Prose Miscellanies_, vol. xxi. p. 289.--_J.G.L._
[185] _The Omen_, by Galt, had just been published.--See Sir Walter's review of this novel in the _Miscellaneous Prose Works_, vol. xviii. p. 333. John Gait died at Greenock in April 1839.--J.G.L.
[186] "A Letter from Malachi Malagrowther, Esq., to the Editor of the _Edinburgh Weekly Journal_, on the proposed Change of Currency, and other late alterations as they affect, or are intended to affect, the Kingdom of Scotland. 8 vo, Edin. 1826."
The motto to the epistle was:--
"When the pipes begin to play _Tutti taittie_ to the drum, Out claymore and down wi' gun, And to the rogues again."
In the next edition it was suppressed, as some friends thought it might be misunderstood. Mr. Croker in his reply had urged that if the author appealed to the edge of the claymore at Prestonpans, he might refer him to the point of the bayonet at Culloden.--See Croker's _Correspondence_, vol. i. pp. 317-320, and Scott's _Life_, vol. viii. pp. 301-5.
[187] Lord Reston, who died at Gladsmuir in 1819. He was one of Scott's companions at the High School.--See _Life_., vol. i. p. 40.
[188] See Gray's _Elegy_.--J.G.L.
[189] In Arthur Murphy's farce of _The Upholsterer, or What News_?
[190] Lady Anna Maria Elliot, daughter of the first Earl of Minto. She married Sir Rufane Donkin in 1832.
[191] Afterwards Lord Advocate, 1834 and 1835, and Judge under the title of Lord Murray from 1839; he died in 1859.
[192] The learned editor of the Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, in 10 vols. folio, Edin. 1814-24; he succeeded Sir Walter as President of the Bannatyne Club in 1832, and died in 1852.
[193] Rose Court, where Mr. Clerk had a bachelor's establishment, was situated immediately behind St. Andrew's Church, George Street. The name disappeared from our Street Directories shortly after Mr. Clerk's death in 1847.
[194] Burns, in Johnson's _Musical Museum_, No. 319.
[195] One of the nineteen original members of _The Club_.--See Mr. Irving's letter with names, _Life_, vol. i. pp. 207-8, and Scott's joyous visit in 1793 to Meigle, pp. 292-4.
[196] Dalgleish was Sir Walter's butler. He said he cared not how much his wages were reduced--but go he would not.--J.G.L.
[197] Whin-cow--_Anglicè_, a bush of furze.--J.G.L.
MARCH.
_March_ 1.--_Malachi_ is in the _Edinburgh Journal_ to-day, and reads like the work of an uncompromising right-forward Scot of the old school. Some of the cautious and pluckless instigators will be afraid of their confederate; for if a man of some energy and openness of character happens to be on the same side with these truckling jobbers, they stand as much in awe of his vehemence as doth the inexperienced conjurer who invokes a fiend whom he cannot manage. Came home, in a heavy shower with the Solicitor. I tried him on the question, but found him reserved and cautious. The future Lord Advocate must be cautious; but I can tell my good friend John Hope that, if he acts the part of a firm and resolute Scottish patriot, both his own country and England will respect him the more. Ah! Hal Dundas, there was no such truckling in thy day!
Looked out a quantity of things to go to Abbotsford; for we are flitting, if you please.[198] It is with a sense of pain that I leave behind a parcel of trumpery prints and little ornaments, once the pride of Lady S----'s heart, but which she sees consigned with indifference to the chance of an auction. Things that have had their day of importance with me I cannot forget, though the merest trifles. But I am glad that she, with bad health and enough to vex her, has not the same useless mode of associating recollections with this unpleasant business. The best part of it is the necessity of leaving behind, viz., setting rid of, a set of most wretched daubs of landscapes, in great gilded frames, of which I have often been heartily ashamed. The history of them was curious. An amateur artist (a lady) happened to fall into misfortunes, upon which her landscapes, the character of which had been buoyed up far beyond their proper level, sank even beneath it, and it was low enough. One most amiable and accomplished old lady continued to encourage her pencil, and to order picture after picture, which she sent in presents to her friends. I suppose I have eight or ten of them, which I could not avoid accepting. There will be plenty of laughing when they come to be sold. It would be a good joke enough to cause it to be circulated that they were performances of my own in early youth, and they would be looked on and bought up as curiosities. True it is that I took lessons of oil-painting in youth from a little Jew animalcule, a smouch called Burrell, a clever sensible creature though; but I could make no progress either in painting or drawing. Nature denied me correctness of eye and neatness of hand, yet I was very desirous to be a draughtsman at least, and laboured harder to attain that point than at any other in my recollection, to which I did not make some approaches. My oil-paintings were to Miss ------ above commemorated what hers are to Claude Lorraine. Yet Burrell was not useless to me altogether neither; he was a Prussian, and I got from him many a long story of the battles of Frederic, in whose armies his father had been a commissary, or perhaps a spy. I remember his picturesque account of seeing a party of the Black Hussars bringing in some forage carts which they had taken from a body of the Cossacks, whom he described as lying on the top of the carts of hay, mortally wounded, and, like the Dying Gladiator, eyeing their own blood as it ran down through the straw. I afterwards took lessons from Walker, whom we used to call Blue-beard. He was one of the most conceited persons in the world, but a good teacher--one of the ugliest countenances he had too--enough, as we say, to spean weans.[199] The man was always extremely precise in the quality of everything about him, his dress, accommodations, and everything else. He became insolvent, poor man, and for some reason or other I attended the meeting of those concerned in his affairs. Instead of ordinary accommodations for writing, each of the persons present was equipped with a large sheet of drawing paper and a swan's quill. It was mournfully ridiculous enough. Skirving[200] made an admirable likeness of Walker, not a single scar or mark of the smallpox which seamed his countenance, but the too accurate brother of the brush had faithfully laid it down in longitude and latitude. Poor Walker destroyed it (being in crayons) rather than let the caricature of his ugliness appear at the sale of his effects. I did learn myself to take some vile views from Nature. When Will Clerk and I lived very much together, I used sometimes to make them under his instruction. He to whom, as to all his family, art is a familiar attribute, wondered at me as a Newfoundland dog would at a greyhound which showed fear of the water.