Home Life of Great Authors Part 4

"But watching by my pillow, or defrauding herself of sleep to bear me company through the heavy watches of the night, sat my Electra; for thou, beloved M., dear companion of my later years, thou wast my Electra! and neither in n.o.bility of mind nor in long-suffering affection would'st permit that a Grecian sister should excel an English wife. For thou thoughtest not much to stoop to humble offices of kindness, and to servile ministrations of tenderest affection; to wipe away for years the unwholesome dews upon the forehead, or to refresh the lips when parched and baked with fever; nor even when thy own peaceful slumbers had by long sympathy become infected with the spectacle of my dread contest with phantoms and shadowy enemies that oftentimes bade me 'sleep no more'--not even then did'st thou utter a complaint or any murmur, nor withdraw thy angelic smiles, nor shrink from thy service of love, more than did Electra of old. For she too, though she was a Grecian woman, and the daughter of the king of men, yet wept sometimes, and hid her face in her robe!"

Hard indeed, no doubt, was the wife's lot through all those years; but the world will never have more than this mere glimpse of her sorrow and her devotion. Yet to a person gifted with imagination, it is enough. He can reconstruct from it that long period of patient watchfulness and unwearied devotion; he can share her hopes when her loved one makes a battle with his enemy, her tears when he is defeated, her rapture when he makes a seeming conquest, the bitterness of her anguish when he again falls. For all this was gone through, not once, but three times, in the course of De Quincey's life. It was not until he felt that death was inevitable if he continued the use of opium (which he was then taking in enormous quant.i.ties) that he ever resolved to give up its use. He knew he must die if he kept on, he thought he should die if he gave it up, but he determined to make the effort. His studies had long been abandoned; he could not even read. For two years he had read but one book; he shrank from study with a sense of infantine powerlessness that gave him great anguish when he remembered what his mind had formerly been. From misery and suffering, he might almost be described as being in a dormant state. His wife managed all the affairs of the household, and attended to necessary business. He did not lose his moral sensibilities or aspirations, as so many opium eaters do, but his intellect seemed dead. His brain had become a theatre, which presented spectacles of more than earthly splendor, but as often painful as pleasurable. He had no control now of the dreams which haunted him. He learned now the awful tyranny of the human face.

"Upon the rocking waters of the ocean, the human face began to appear: the sea appeared paved with innumerable faces, upturned to the heavens,--faces imploring, wrathful, despairing, surged upwards by thousands, by myriads, by generations, by centuries; my agitation was infinite, my mind tossed and surged with the ocean. .

. . I was buried for a thousand years in stone coffins, with mummies and sphinxes, in narrow chambers at the heart of eternal pyramids. I was kissed with cancerous kisses by crocodiles; and laid confounded with all unutterable slimy things, among reeds and Nilotic mud. . . . The cursed crocodile became to me the object of more horror than almost all the rest. I was compelled to live with him for centuries."

The struggle was a long and hard one, and of it he says:--

"Jeremy Taylor conjectures that it may be as painful to be born as to die. I think it probable; and during the whole period of my diminis.h.i.+ng opium I had the torments of a man pa.s.sing out of one mode of existence into another. . . . One memorial of my former condition still remains; my dreams are not yet perfectly calm; the dread swell and agitation of the storm have not wholly subsided.

My dreams are still tumultuous, and like the gates of Paradise to our first parents when looking back from afar, it is still, in the tremendous line of Milton,

'With dreadful faces thronged, and fiery arms.'"

It is sad to learn that after all his struggles he never really succeeded in freeing himself from the spell of opium. We learn that "after having at one time abstained wholly for sixty-one days, he was compelled to return to its moderate use, as life was found to be insupportable; and there is no record of any further attempt at total abstinence." His indulgence was, however, very limited in his later years. Weakly as he was, and with a stomach which could digest but the smallest quant.i.ty of food, he lived in tolerable health until he was seventy-four years old. His wife died over twenty years before he pa.s.sed away; and his daughters made a home for him during that time, and cared for him, as his wife had done. He could never be trusted with any practical matters whatever. He had a nervous horror of handling money, and would give away bank-notes to get them out of his way. He was very generous when young, and gave Coleridge three hundred pounds at one time, insisting upon making it five hundred, which was not allowed. He never had a friend who was not welcome to his purse. While he had no care whatever about his dress, and would frequently enter the drawing-room, even when company was there, with but one stocking on, or minus some other very necessary adjunct of dress, he was very dainty and neat about many things. The greasy, crumpled, Scotch one-pound notes annoyed him. He did his best to smooth and cleanse them, before parting with them, and he washed and polished s.h.i.+llings up to their pristine brightness before giving them away. He used to complain of Wordsworth, because of a lack of neatness, and describes somewhere his agony at seeing the old poet cut the leaves of a new book with a knife taken from the supper-table, where b.u.t.tered toast had been eaten. Coleridge was also distressed over Wordsworth's treatment of books, and says that one would as soon trust a bear in a tulip-garden as Wordsworth in a library.

De Quincey was a very charming companion and a most brilliant talker. He says of himself and Lamb, that they both had a childish love of nonsense,--headlong nonsense. While much given to reverie, and somewhat shy, he had a great fund of humor, drollery, and effervescent wit, which made his society much liked by all fortunate enough to be acquainted with him. He was a very abstemious man, and his tastes were of the simplest. His whole manner and speech were imbued with a high-bred courtesy, though he sometimes loved to run counter to the ordinary conventionalities of life. He could never be depended upon for keeping any sort of engagement, and if a friend wanted him to dinner, he must go for him with his carriage, and take him away. His manner to his daughters was the perfection of chivalrous respect, as well as affection.

What he might have been had he never contracted his fatal habit of opium eating, it is perhaps useless to conjecture; but in his youth he was thought to be one who might do anything,--all things. What he really did do, of permanent value, is very little compared to the expectations of his friends.

Blameless as was his life in every other respect, the pity of this weakness seems infinitely great, and we mourn over his lot with the same unavailing sorrow with which we weep over the graves of other men of great gifts, but some fatal defect of will, which allows them to be bound and held captive all their lives in the chains of some darling vice. Mingled with the rosemary of our remembrance for such, must be the fennel and the rue.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

WALTER SCOTT.

"Day set on Norham's castled steep, And Tweed's fair river, broad and deep, And Cheviot's mountains lone.

The battled towers, the donjon keep, The loop-hole grates, where captives weep, The flanking walls that round it sweep, In yellow l.u.s.tre shone.

The warriors on the turrets high, Moving athwart the evening sky, Seemed forms of giant height; Their armor, as it caught the rays, Flashed back again the western blaze, In lines of dazzling light."

Who does not remember the ring of the opening lines of "Marmion,"--p.r.o.nounced by Horace Greeley to be the finest verse of descriptive writing in the language? How often were they declaimed from the school rostrums in the days, dear reader, when you and I were young!

What do school boys and girls declaim now, we wonder, equal to the selections from Scott, which formed the greatest part of our stock in trade? Have "Marmion," and "The Lady of the Lake," and the immortal "Lay" been superseded by the trivialities and inanities of modern poetasters? or do the good old lines still hold their own? Does the orator of the cla.s.s still rise and electrify the whole school, as in the former days, by drawing his cloak around him, like the n.o.ble Douglas, and declaring:--

"My manors, halls, and bowers shall still Be open to my Sovereign's will,-- To each one whom he lists, howe'er Unmeet to be the owner's peer.

My castles are my King's alone, From turret to foundation-stone: The hand of Douglas is his own; And never shall in friendly grasp The hand of such as Marmion clasp."

And is the whole school lost in breathless admiration still as he continues:--

"Burned Marmion's swarthy cheek like fire, And shook his very frame for ire, And--'This to me!' he said; 'An 'twere not for thy h.o.a.ry beard, Such hand as Marmion's had not spared To cleave the Douglas' head!'"

We wonder does the--

"Minstrel come once more to view The eastern ridge of Benvenue."

And if he still sees--

"the dagger-crest of Mar, Still sees the Moray's silver star, Wave o'er the cloud of Saxon war, That up the lake comes winding far!"

And does the blood of the youthful listener still thrill as he thinks of the glory of that cavalcade, till he feels, as we used of old, that--

"'Twere worth ten years of peaceful life, One glance at their array."

And does he still throw the old pathos into the lines,--

"Where, where was Roderick then!

One blast upon his bugle horn Were worth a thousand men."

Probably he does not. This is all doubtless very old-fas.h.i.+oned, and we doubt if the modern school would quite rise to the situation, even when Roderick makes himself known to Fitz-James, "And, stranger, I am Roderick Dhu;" but in the days we wot of, you and I, this was the most thrilling climax in all literature. Have the boys outgrown "Ivanhoe"

too? And do they prefer to hear Du Chaillu tell about the gorillas he invented, or go with Jules Verne twenty thousand leagues under the sea?

We hope not, for their sakes, but wish that they may enjoy the tournament as we did, and delight in the "clang of the armor," "the lifting of the vizor," and everything connected with "the lists." We trust, too, that they will walk with Sir Walter everywhere throughout the Highlands, until every mount and loch and ruined castle has become their own; that they will follow poor Jeanie Deans through the "Heart of Mid-Lothian;" that they will shed true, heartfelt tears over "Kenilworth," and love as did the older generations the "Bride of Lammermoor."

Let us be steadfast in our love of the old books; let us never grow weary of the world-read cla.s.sics. Who cares for the books of the year?

Next twelvemonth we shall not know whether we have read them or not; but what a fadeless possession is the memory of one of the world-books! Life is too brief to be spent upon ephemera; let us go back from our wanderings in the wilderness of new books, and draw nearer to the wells of English undefiled.

To this end let us study this man "than his brethren taller and fairer,"--this kingly Sir Walter of the ancient line.

He says that "every Scotchman has a pedigree." It is a national prerogative, as inalienable as his pride and his poverty. Sir Walter's pedigree was gentle, he being connected, though remotely, with ancient families upon both sides of the house. He was lineally descended from Auld Watt, an ancient chieftain whose name he often made ring in border ballads. He was one of twelve children, and was not specially distinguished through childhood; though, being lame, he got much comfort from books. He took the usual amount of Latin, but obstinately rebelled at the Greek, and even in his college days would have none of it. He was distinguished there by the name of "The Greek Blockhead," and even his excellent professor was betrayed into saying that "dunce he was and dunce he would remain,"--"an opinion," says Scott, "which my excellent and learned friend lived to revoke over a bottle of Burgundy after I had achieved some literary distinction." He read everything he could lay hands on, in English, all through his youth, and his reading seems to have been entirely undirected. He tells about discovering "some odd volumes of Shakspeare," and adds: "Nor can I forget the rapture with which I sat up in my s.h.i.+rt reading them by the light of a fire in my mother's apartment, until the bustle of the family rising from supper warned me it was time to creep back to my bed, where I was supposed to have been safely deposited since nine o'clock." He soon after became enamoured of Ossian and Spenser, whom he thought he could have read forever.

His first acquaintance with the Highlands he was to immortalize was made in his fifteenth year. The same year he became apprenticed to the law in his father's office. The Highland visits were repeated nearly every year thereafter, and from the first afforded him the greatest delight. Of this first visit he says: "Since that hour the recollection of that inimitable landscape has possessed the strangest influence over my mind and retained its place as a memorable thing, while much that was influential on my own fortunes has fled from my recollections."

His appearance at this time was very engaging. He had outgrown his early sallowness and had a fresh, brilliant complexion. His eyes were clear, open, and well set, with a changeful expression; his teeth were dazzling white, and his smile delightful. In very early youth he formed a strong attachment for a young lady very highly connected, and of position far above his own, and of great personal attractions. Their acquaintance began in the Grey Friars Churchyard, where, rain beginning to fall one Sunday as the congregation were dispersing, Scott happened to offer his umbrella, and, the offer being accepted, he escorted her to her residence. The acquaintance proved pleasant to both, and they met frequently, until it became an understood thing that he should escort her home from church. When Scott's father learned of it he deemed it his duty to warn the young lady's father of the interest the young pair were taking in each other, but the gentleman did not think it necessary to interfere. This affection was nourished through several years, and Scott had no thought but that marriage would be its final result, as the young lady warmly reciprocated his attachment, and the parents apparently threw no obstacles in the way. But the little romance, like so many other youthful dreams, was destined to be rudely broken, and the lady was married in due time, by her friends, to a gentleman of high rank and character, who later in life acted the part of a generous patron to his early rival. His hopes of marriage with this lady had rendered him very industrious and devoted to business, and kept him from all youthful follies. These things were certainly clear gains to the young man from the connection, if we say nothing of the pleasant store of memories with which it furnished his whole after-life. But the blow was a severe one when the parting came, and Scott could not refer to it without emotion even after many years. But he was still quite young--not over twenty-five years of age--and he soon saw a lady in whom he grew much interested. Riding, Lockhart tells us, "one day with Ferguson, they met, some miles from Gilsland, a young lady taking the air on horseback, whom neither of them had previously remarked, and whose appearance instantly struck them both so much they kept her in view until they had satisfied themselves that she also was one of the party at Gilsland. The same evening there was a ball, at which Captain Scott appeared in regimentals, and Ferguson also thought proper to be equipped in the uniform of the Edinburgh Volunteers. There was no little rivalry among the young travellers as to who should first get presented to the unknown beauty of the morning's ride; but though both the gentlemen in scarlet had the advantage of being her dancing-partners, young Walter succeeded in handing the fair stranger to supper; and such was his first introduction to Charlotte Margaret Carpenter." She was very beautiful,--a complexion of clearest and lightest olive, eyes large, deep-set, and dazzling, of the finest Italian brown, and a profusion of black hair. Her manners had the well-bred reserve of an Englishwoman, and something of the coquetry of the French from whom she was descended.

She spoke with a slight accent, and with much vivacity. Madame Charpentier had made her escape to England during the Revolution,--her husband having been a devoted Royalist and Government officer,--and she had brought up her children as Protestants. No lovelier vision than that of Margaret had ever dazzled the eyes of our young hero, and he became her devoted cavalier at once.

He thus describes her to his mother when announcing his engagement:--

"Without flying into raptures,--for I must a.s.sure you that my judgment as well as my affections are consulted upon this occasion,--without flying into raptures, then, I may safely a.s.sure you that her temper is sweet and cheerful, her understanding good, and, what I know will give you pleasure, her principles of religion very serious. Her fortune is five hundred pounds a year."

These are a few extracts from Miss Carpenter's letters:--

"Before I conclude this famous epistle I will give you a little hint,--that is, not to put so many 'musts' in your letters, it is beginning rather too soon; and another thing is that I take the liberty not to mind them much, but I expect you to mind me. You must take care of yourself; you must think of me and believe me yours sincerely. . . . I am very glad that you don't give up the cavalry, as I love anything that is stylish. Don't forget to find a stand for the old carriage, as I shall like to keep it in case we have to go a journey; it will do very well until we can keep our carriage. What an idea of yours was that to mention where you wish to have your bones laid! If you were married I should think you had tired of me. A pretty compliment before marriage! If you always have those cheerful thoughts, how very pleasant and gay you must be. Adieu, my dearest friend. Take care of yourself if you love me, as I have no wish that you should visit that beautiful and romantic scene, the burial place! . . . Arrange it so that we shall see none of your family the night of our arrival. I shall be so tired, and such a fright, I should not be seen to advantage."

All of which reads as though the young ladies of 1797 were not very different from those of our own day. After the marriage they went to reside in Edinburgh, and enjoyed some of the gayeties of that time. They were most particularly attracted by the theatres. Mrs. Scott had a great fondness for the shows and pomps of the world, as she had not concealed from him before marriage, and she never recovered from such fondness; but she accommodated herself well to her surroundings, and the young couple were very happy.

In 1814 "Waverley" was published, and received with wonder and delight by the whole reading world. "Guy Mannering" followed closely upon it, and was said to have been written in six weeks' time. It intensified the interest already aroused, and made men wonder anew who this great new light could be. The tragical "Bride of Lammermoor" composed at white heat in a fortnight, added greatly to the sensation, and the whole country was in a fever of excitement over the creations of this enchanted pen. The secret of the authors.h.i.+p of the novels was kept for a long time even from Scott's intimate friends. During the great success of these works, Scott began the building of his house at Abbotsford, and put into the vast and imposing structure so much money that he became very much embarra.s.sed in his finances, and the serious troubles of his life began. The extravagance of his outlay upon his estate, together with liabilities he had a.s.sumed for others, led finally to financial ruin, to overwork, and probably to premature death. Let us make a few extracts from his diary written when these misfortunes were fresh upon him.

"What a life mine has been! Half-educated, almost wholly neglected or left to myself; stuffing my head with most nonsensical trash, and undervalued by the most of my companions for a time; getting forward, and held to be a bold and clever fellow, contrary to the opinion of all who had held me a mere dreamer; broken-hearted for two years, my heart handsomely pieced again,--but the crack will remain till my dying day. Rich and poor four or five times; once on the verge of ruin, yet opened a new source of wealth almost overflowing. Now to be broken in my pitch of pride and nearly winged (unless good news should come) because London chooses to be in an uproar, and in the tumult of bulls and bears a poor, inoffensive lion like myself is pushed to the wall. n.o.body in the end can lose a penny by me, that is one comfort. I have the satisfaction to recollect that my prosperity has been of advantage to many, and to hope that some at least will forgive my transient wealth on account of the innocence of my intentions, and my real wish to do good to the poor. . . . How could I tread my hall again with such a diminished crest? How live a poor, indebted man, where I was once the wealthy, the honored? I was to have gone there Sat.u.r.day in joy and prosperity to receive my friends. My dogs will wait for me in vain. It is foolish, but the thoughts of parting from these dumb creatures have moved me more than any of the painful reflections I have put down. Poor things, I must get them kind masters. I must end these gloomy forebodings, or I shall lose the tone of mind with which men should meet distress. I feel my dogs' feet on my knees; I hear them whining and seeking me everywhere. . . .

"I feel neither dishonored nor broken down by the bad--now really bad--news I have received. I have walked my last on the domains I have planted; sat the last time in the halls I have built. But death would have taken them from me if misfortune had spared them.

My poor people whom I loved so well! There is just another die to turn up against me in this run of ill-luck,--that is, if I should break my magic wand in the fall from the elephant, and lose my popularity with my fortune.

"Read again and for the third time Miss Austen's story of 'Pride and Prejudice.' That young lady has a talent for describing the involvements, the feelings, and characters of ordinary life which is to me the most wonderful I ever met with. The Big Bow-wow strain I can do myself like any now going, but the exquisite touch which renders ordinary commonplace things interesting is denied to me."

Troubles had indeed come thick and fast upon poor Scott, and the heaviest blow was yet to fall. In 1826 Lady Scott was taken from him, and about the same time a number of his old friends. He felt his desolation extremely, but kept up bravely for the most part, and worked prodigiously for many months. There is a grandeur about the way he bore his misfortunes which casts into shade all that was fine in his character during his prosperous years. Most men, even of brave and n.o.ble natures, would have been overcome by misfortunes so overwhelming as were his, and would never have thought of extricating themselves; but he seemed to rise to the occasion in a quite unexampled manner, and to fight with the utmost bravery and fort.i.tude to the last. The wound to his affections was, however, very hard to recover from, and he broke more rapidly after Lady Scott's death than ever before. He writes:--