Lockhart The Life of Sir Walter Scott, Vol. 4: 1816 - 1820

1. Auflage 2014
ISBN: 978-3-8496-4549-6
Verlag: Jazzybee Verlag
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 399 Seiten

Biography yields to no other species of composition, in interest and instruction. More especially is this true, when the subjects of which it treats are the struggles and vicissitudes of a life devoted to the pursuits of literature. There is a pleasure of the purest kind in observing the gradual development of thought and re?nement of expression in one, who, smitten with a love of the good and the beautiful, and desirous to leave something behind him less perishable than his tombstone, has 'scorned delights and loved laborious days.' No one can read these Memoirs of Sir Walter Scott, so long and so anxiously expected, without feeling this pleasure, and without deriving from them that instruction which might not be received from the perusal of less interesting works. In our judgment, not the least important lesson which these memoirs teach, is the advantage, or rather the necessity, which there is of having some profession less precarious than that of literature, upon which the child of genius can fall back for comfort or support in the hour when adversity clouds the lights which hope hung up in the uncertain future. This is volume 4 out of 7 of one of the best and most extensive Scott biographies ever and it covers the years 1816 through 1820.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Lockhart, John Gibson

Leseproben

Chapter III.

EXCURSION TO THE LENNOX—GLASGOW—AND DRUMLANRIG—PURCHASE OF TOFTFIELD—ESTABLISHMENT OF THE FERGUSON FAMILY AT HUNTLY BURN—LINES WRITTEN IN ILLNESS—VISITS OF WASHINGTON IRVING—LADY BYRON—AND SIR DAVID WILKIE—PROGRESS OF THE BUILDING AT ABBOTSFORD—LETTERS TO MORRITT—TERRY, &c.—CONCLUSION OF ROB ROY— 1817.

During the summer term of 1817, Scott seems to have laboured chiefly on his History of 1815, for the Register, which was published in August; but he also found time to draw up the Introduction for a richly embellished quarto, entitled “Border Antiquities,” which came out a month later. This valuable essay, containing large additions to the information previously embodied in the Minstrelsy, has been included in the late collection of his Miscellaneous Prose, and has thus obtained a circulation not to be expected for it in the original costly form.

Upon the rising of the Court in July, he made an excursion to the Lennox, chiefly that he might visit a cave at the head of Loch Lomond, said to have been a favourite retreat of his hero, Rob Roy. He was accompanied to the seat of his friend, Mr. Macdonald Buchanan, by Captain Adam Ferguson—the long Linton of the days of his apprenticeship; and thence to Glasgow, where, under the auspices of a kind and intelligent acquaintance, Mr. John Smith, bookseller, he refreshed his recollection of the noble cathedral, and other localities of the birth-place of Bailie Jarvie. Mr. Smith took care also to show the tourists the most remarkable novelties in the great manufacturing establishments of his flourishing city; and he remembers particularly the delight which Scott expressed on seeing the process of singeing muslin that is, of divesting the finished web of all superficial knots and irregularities, by passing it, with the rapidity of lightning, over a rolling bar of red-hot iron. “The man that imagined this,” said Scott, “was the Shakspeare of the Wabsters—

‘Things out of hope are compass’d oft with vent’ring.’”

The following note indicates the next stages of his progress:—

To his Grace the Duke of Buccleuch, Drumlanrig Castle.

“Sanquhar, 2 o’clock, July 30, 1817.

“From Ross, where the clouds on Ben-Lomond are sleeping—

From Greenock, where Clyde to the Ocean is sweeping—

From Largs, where the Scotch gave the Northmen a drilling—

From Ardrossan, whose harbour cost many a shilling—

From Old Cumnock, where beds are as hard as a plank, sir—

From a chop and green pease, and a chicken in Sanquhar,

This eve, please the Fates, at Drumlanrig we anchor.

W. S.”

The Poet and Captain Ferguson remained a week at Drumlanrig, and thence repaired together to Abbotsford. By this time, the foundations of that part of the existing house, which extends from the hall westwards to the original court-yard, had been laid; and Scott now found a new source of constant occupation in watching the proceedings of his masons. He had, moreover, no lack of employment further a-field,—for he was now negotiating with another neighbouring landowner for the purchase of an addition, of more consequence than any he had hitherto made, to his estate. In the course of the autumn he concluded this matter, and became, for the price of £10,000, proprietor of the lands of Toftfield* on which there had recently been erected a substantial mansion-house, fitted, in all points, for the accommodation of a genteel family. This circumstance offered a temptation which much quickened Scott’s zeal for completing his arrangement. The venerable Professor Ferguson had died a year before; Captain Adam Ferguson was at home on half-pay; and Scott now saw the means of securing for himself, henceforth, the immediate neighbourhood of the companion of his youth, and his amiable sisters. Ferguson, who had written, from the lines of Torres Vedras, his hopes of finding, when the war should be over, some sheltering cottage upon the Tweed, within a walk of Abbotsford, was delighted to see his dreams realized; and the family took up their residence next spring at the new house of Toftfield, on which Scott then bestowed, at the ladies’ request, the name of Huntly Burn:—this more harmonious designation being taken from the mountain brook which passes through its grounds and garden, the same famous in tradition as the scene of Thomas the Rhymer’s interviews with the Queen of Fairy. The upper part of the Rhymer’s Glen, through which this brook finds its way from the Cauldshiels Loch to Toftfield, had been included in a previous purchase. He was now master of all these haunts of “True Thomas,” and of the whole ground of the battle of Melrose from Skirmish-Field to Turn-again. His enjoyment of the new territories was, however, interrupted by various returns of his cramp, and the depression of spirit which always attended, in his case, the use of opium, the only medicine that seemed to have power over the disease.

* On completing this purchase, Scott writes to John Ballantyne:—“Dear John, I have closed with Usher for his beautiful patrimony, which makes me a great laird. I am afraid the people will take me up for coining. Indeed, these novels, while their attractions last, are something like it. I am very glad of your good prospects. Still I cry, Prudence! Prudence! Yours truly, W. S.”

It was while struggling with such languor, on one lovely evening of this autumn, that he composed the following beautiful verses. They mark the very spot of their birth,—namely, the then naked height overhanging the northern side of the Cauldshiels Loch, from which Melrose Abbey to the eastward, and the hills of Ettrick and Yarrow to the west, are now visible over a wide range of rich woodland,—all the work of the poet’s hand:—

“The sun upon the Weirdlaw Hill,

In Ettrick’s vale, is sinking sweet;

The westland wind is hush and still—

The lake lies sleeping at my feet.

Yet not the landscape to mine eye

Bears those bright hues that once it bore;

Though evening, with her richest dye,

Flames o’er the hills of Ettrick’s shore.

“With listless look along the plain

I see Tweed’s silver current glide,

And coldly mark the holy fane

Of Melrose rise in ruin’d pride.

The quiet lake, the balmy air,

The hill, the stream, the tower, the tree,—

Are they still such as once they were,

Or is the dreary change in me?

“Alas, the warp’d and broken board,

How can it bear the painter’s dye!

The harp of strain’d and tuneless chord,

How to the minstrel’s skill reply!

To aching eyes each landscape lowers,

To feverish pulse each gale blows chill;

And Araby’s or Eden’s bowers

Were barren as this moorland hill.”

He again alludes to his illness in a letter to Mr. Morritt:—

To J. B. S. Morritt, Esq. M.P. Rokeby.

“Abbotsford, Aug. 11, 1817.

“My dear Morritt,

“I am arrived from a little tour in the west of Scotland, and had hoped, in compliance with your kind wish, to have indulged myself with a skip over the Border as far as Rokeby, about the end of this month. But my fate denies me this pleasure; for, in consequence of one or two blunders, during my absence, in executing my new premises, I perceive the necessity of remaining at the helm while they are going on. Our masons, though excellent workmen, are too little accustomed to the gimcracks of their art, to be trusted with the execution of a bravura plan, without constant inspection. Besides, the said labourers lay me under the necessity of labouring a little myself; and I find I can no longer with impunity undertake to make one week’s hard work supply the omissions of a fortnight’s idleness. Like you, I have abridged my creature-comforts—as Old Mortality would call them—renouncing beer and ale on all ordinary occasions; also pastry, fruit, &c. and all that tends to acidity. These are awkward warnings; but sat est vixisse. To have lived respected and regarded by some of the best men in our age, is enough for an individual like me; the rest must be as God wills, and when he wills.

“The poor laws into which you have ventured for the love of the country, form a sad quagmire. They are like John Bunyan’s Slough of Despond, into which, as he observes, millions of cart loads of good resolutions have been thrown, without perceptibly mending the way. From what you say, and from what I have heard from others, there is a very natural desire to trust to one or two empirical remedies, such as general systems of education, and so forth. But a...