Walter's account of his various quarters per last despatch. Query if original:--
"Loughrea is a blackguard place To Gort I give my curse; Athlone itself is bad enough, But Ballinrobe is worse. I cannot tell which is the worst, They're all so very bad; But of all towns I ever saw, Bad luck to Kinnegad."
Old Mr. Haliburton dined with us, also Colonel Russell. What a man for fourscore or thereby is Old Haly--an Indian too. He came home in 1785.
_July_ 29.--Yesterday I wrought little, and light work, almost stifled by the smothering heat. To-day I wrought about half task in the morning, and, as a judgment on me I think for yesterday's sloth, Mr. H. stayed unusually late in the forenoon. He is my friend, my father's friend, and an excellent, sensible man besides; and a man of eighty and upwards may be allowed to talk long, because in the nature of things he cannot have long to talk. If I do a task to-day, I hope to send a good parcel on Monday and keep tryst pretty well.
_July_ 30.--I did better yesterday than I had hoped for--four instead of three pages, which, considering how my time was cut up by prolonged morning lounging with friend Haly, was pretty fair. I wrote a good task before eleven o'clock, but then my good friends twaddled and dawdled for near two hours before they set off. The time devoted to hospitality, especially to those whom I can reckon upon as sincere good friends, I never grudge, but like to "welcome the coming, speed the parting guest." By my will every guest should part at half-past ten, or arrange himself to stay for the day.
We had a long walk in a sweltering hot day. Met Mr. Blackwood coming to call, and walked him on with us, so blinked his visit--_gratias, domine_!! Asked him for breakfast to-morrow to make amends. I rather over-walked myself--the heat considered.
_July_ 31st_.--I corrected six sheets and sent them off, with eight leaves of copy, so I keep forward pretty well. Blackwood the bookseller came over from Chiefswood to breakfast, and this kept me idle till eleven o'clock. At twelve I went out with the girls in the sociable, and called on the family at Bemerside, on Dr.[306] and Mrs. Brewster, and Mr. Bainbridge at Gattonside House. It was five ere we got home, so there was a day dished, unless the afternoon does something for us. I am keeping up pretty well, however, and, after all, visitors will come, and calls must be made. I must not let Anne forego the custom of well-bred society.
FOOTNOTES:
[292] Thomas Hamilton, Esq. (brother of Sir William Hamilton, the Metaphysician), author of _Cyril Thornton_, _Men and Manners in America_, _Annals of the Peninsular Campaign_, _etc._ Died in 1842.
[293] Bryan Waller Procter, author of _Dramatic Scenes, and other Poems_, 1819. He died in London in 1874.
[294] A favourite expression of Scott's, from _Robinson Crusoe_.
[295] John Hay Forbes (Lord Medwyn from 1825 to 1852), second son of Sir William Forbes of Pitsligo. Lord Medwyn died at the age of seventy-eight in 1854.
[296] _The Highland Widow_.
[297] A favourite exclamation of Sir Walter's, which he had picked up on his Irish tour, signifying "don't mind it"--_Na-bac-leis_. Compare Sir Boyle Roche's dream that his head was cut off and placed upon a table: "'_Quis separabit?_' says the head; '_Naboclish_,' says I, in the same language."
[298] That Mr. Kinloch was not singular in his opinion has been shown by the remarks made in the House of Commons (see _ante_, March 17). Lord Cockburn in his _Trials for Sedition_ says, "With Botany Bay before him, and money to make himself comfortable in Paris, George Kinloch would have been an idiot if he had stayed." Mr. Kinloch had just returned to Scotland.
[299] His neighbour, John Archibald Murray, then living at 122 George Street.--See p. 133.
[300] See Molière's _l'École des Femmes_.
[301] In 1827 Scott was one day heard saying, as he saw Peter guiding the plough on the haugh:--"Egad, auld Pepe's whistling at his darg: if things get round with me, easy will be his cushion!" Old Peter lived until he was eighty-four. He died at Abbotsford in 1854, where he had been well cared for, respected, and beloved by all the members of the family since Sir Walter's death.
[302] Sheridan's _Rivals_, Act II. Sc. 1.
[303] The murder of Weare by Thurtell and Co., at Gill's-Hill in Hertfordshire (1824). Sir Walter collected printed trials with great assiduity, and took care always to have the contemporary ballads and prints bound up with them. He admired particularly this verse of Mr. Hook's broadside--
"They cut his throat from ear to ear, His brains they battered in; His name was Mr. William Weare, He dwelt in Lyon's Inn."
--J.G.L.
[304] Dr. John Jamieson, formerly minister to a Secession congregation in Forfar, removed to a like charge in Edinburgh in 1795, where he officiated for forty-three years; he died in his house in 4 George Square in 1838, aged seventy-nine.
[305] This novel was passing through the press in 8vo, 12mo, and 18mo, to complete collective editions in these sizes.--J.G.I.
[306] Afterwards Sir David Brewster. He died at Allerley House on the Tweed, aged eighty-seven, on February 10, 1868.
AUGUST.
_August_ 1.--Yesterday evening did nothing for the _idlesse_ of the morning. I was hungry; eat and drank and became drowsy; then I took to arranging the old plays, of which Terry had brought me about a dozen, and dipping into them scrambled through two. One, called _Michaelmas Term_,[307] full of traits of manners; and another a sort of bouncing tragedy, called the _Hector of Germany, or the Palsgrave_.[308] The last, worthless in the extreme, is, like many of the plays in the beginning of the seventeenth century, written to a good tune. The dramatic poets of that time seem to have possessed as joint-stock a highly poetical and abstract tone of language, so that the worst of them often remind you of the very best. The audience must have had a much stronger sense of poetry in those days than now, since language was received and applauded at the Fortune or at the Red Bull,[309] which could not now be understood by any general audience in Great Britain. This leads far.
This morning I wrote two hours, then out with Tom Purdie, and gave directions about thinning all the plantations above Abbotsford properly so called. Came in at one o'clock and now set to work. _Debout, debout, Lyciscas, debout._[310] Finished four leaves.
_August_ 2.--Well; and to-day I finished before dinner five leaves more, and I would crow a little about it, but here comes Duty like an old housekeeper to an idle chambermaid. Hear her very words:--
DUTY.--Oh! you crow, do you? Pray, can you deny that your sitting so quiet at work was owing to its raining heavily all the forenoon, and indeed till dinner-time, so that nothing would have stirred out that could help it, save a duck or a goose? I trow, if it had been a fine day, by noon there would have been aching of the head, throbbing, shaking, and so forth, to make an apology for going out.
EGOMET IPSE.--And whose head ever throbbed to go out when it rained, Mrs. Duty?
DUTY.--_Answer not to me with a fool-born jest_, as your poor friend Erskine used to say to you when you escaped from his good advice under the fire of some silly pun. You smoke a cigar after dinner, and I never check you--drink tea, too, which is loss of time; and then, instead of writing me one other page, or correcting those you have written out, you rollick into the woods till you have not a dry thread about you; and here you sit writing down my words in your foolish journal instead of minding my advice.
EGO.--Why, Mrs. Duty, I would as gladly be friends with [you] as Crabbe's[311] tradesman fellow with his conscience; but you should have some consideration with human frailty.
DUTY.--Reckon not on that. But, however, good-night for the present. I would only recommend to you to think no thoughts in which I am not mingled--to read no books in which I have no concern--to write three sheets of botheration all the six days of the week _per diem_, and on the seventh to send them to the printer. Thus advising, I heartily bid you farewell.
EGO.--Farewell, madam (exit Duty) and be d--d to ye for an unreasonable bitch! "The devil must be in this greedy gled!" as the Earl of Angus said to his hawk; "will she never be satisfied?"[312] I believe in my soul she is the very hag who haunted the merchant Abudah.[313]
I'll have my great chest upstairs exorcised, but first I'll take a nap till supper, which must take place within ten minutes.
_August_ 3.--Wrote half a task in the morning. From eleven till half-past eight in Selkirk taking precognitions about a _row_, and came home famished and tired. Now, Mrs. Duty, do you think there is no other Duty of the family but yourself? Or can the Sheriff-depute neglect his Duty, that the author may mind _his_? The thing cannot be; the people of Selkirk must have justice as well as the people of England books. So the two Duties may go pull caps about it. My conscience is clear.