The Journal of Sir Walter Scott Part 70

Honest old Mr. Ferrier is dead, at extreme old age. I confess I should not wish to live so long. He was a man with strong pa.s.sions and strong prejudices, but with generous and manly sentiments at the same time. We used to call him Uncle Adam, after that character in his gifted daughter's novel of the _Heiress_ [Inheritance]. I wrote a long letter after I came home to my Lord Elgin about Greens.h.i.+elds, the sculptor.[241] I am afraid he is going into the burlesque line, to which sculpture is peculiarly ill adapted. So I have expressed my veto to his patron, _valeat quantum_. Also a letter to Mrs. Professor Sandford at Glasgow about reprinting Macaulay's _History of St.

Kilda_,[242] advising them to insert the history of Lady Grange who was kidnapped and banished thither.

I corrected my proofs, moreover, and prepared to dine. After dinner we go to Euphemia Erskine's marriage. Mr. Dallas came in and presented me with an old pedigree of the M'Intoshes. The wedding took place with the usual April weather of smiles and tears. The bridegroom's name is Dawson. As he, as well as the bride, is very tall, they have every chance of bringing up a family of giants. The bridegroom has an excellent character. He is only a captain, but economy does wonders in the army, where there are many facilities for practising it. I sincerely wish them happiness.

_January_ 21.--Went out to Dalkeith House to dine and stay all night.

Found Marquis of Lothian and a family party. I liked the sense and spirit displayed by this young n.o.bleman, who reminds me strongly of his parents, whom I valued so highly.

_January_ 22.--Left Dalkeith after breakfast, and gained the Parliament House, where there was almost nothing to do, at eleven o'clock.

Afterwards sat to Graham, who is making a good thing of it. Mr. Colvin Smith has made a better in one sense, having sold ten or twelve copies of the portrait to different friends.[243] The Solicitor came to dine with me--we drank a bottle of champagne, and two bottles of claret, which, in former days, I should have thought a very sober allowance, since, Lockhart included, there were three persons to drink it. But I felt I had drunk too much, and was uncomfortable. The young men stood it like young men. Skene and his wife and daughter looked in in the evening. I suppose I am turning to my second childhood, for not only am I filled drunk, or made stupid at least, with one bottle of wine, but I am disabled from writing by chilblains on my fingers--a most babyish complaint. They say that the character is indicated by the handwriting; if so, mine is crabbed enough.

_January_ 23.--Still severe frost, annoying to sore fingers. Nothing on the roll. I sat at home and wrote letters to Wilkie, Landseer, Mrs.

Hughes, Charles, etc. Went out to old Mr. Ferrier's funeral, and saw the last duty rendered to my old friend, whose age was

"----Like a l.u.s.ty winter, Frosty, but kindly,"[244]

I mean in a moral as well as a physical sense. I then went to Cadell's for some few minutes.

I carried out Lockhart to Dalkeith, where we dined, supped, and returned through a clinking frost, with snow on the ground. Lord Ramsay and the Miss Kerrs were at Dalkeith. The Duke shows, for so young a man, a great deal of character, and seems to have a proper feeling of the part he has to play. The evening was pleasant, but the thought that I was now the visitor and friend of the family in the third generation lay somewhat heavy on me. Every thing around me seemed to say that beauty, power, wealth, honour were but things of a day.

_January_ 24.--Heavy fall of snow. Lockhart is off in the mail. I hope he will not be blockaded. The day bitter cold. I went to the Court, and with great difficulty returned along the slippery street. I ought to have taken the carriage, but I have a superst.i.tious dread of giving up the habit of walking, and would willingly stick to the last by my old hardy customs.

Little but trifles to do at the Court. My hands are so covered with chilblains that I can hardly use a pen--my feet ditto.

We bowled away at six o'clock to Mr. Wardlaw Ramsay's. Found we were a week too early, and went back as if our noses had been bleeding.

_January_ 25.--Worked seriously all morning, expecting the Fergusons to dinner. Alas! instead of that, I learn that my poor innocent friend Mary is no more. She was a person of some odd and peculiar habits, wore a singular dress, and affected wild and solitary haunts, but she was, at the same time, a woman of talent, and even genius. She used often to take long walks with me up through the glens; and I believe her sincere good wishes attended me, as I was always glad of an opportunity to show her kindness. I shall long think of her when at Abbotsford. This sad event breaks up our little party. Will Clerk came, however, and his _tete-a-tete_ was, of course, interesting and amusing in the highest degree. We drank some whisky and water, and smoked a cigar or two, till nine at night.

"No after friends.h.i.+ps ere can raise The endearments of our early days."

_January_ 26.--I muzzed on--I can call it little better--with _Anne of Geierstein_. The materials are excellent, but the power of using them is failing. Yet I wrote out about three pages, sleeping at intervals.

_January_ 27.--A great and general thaw, the streets afloat, the snow descending on one's head from the roofs. Went to the Court. There was little to do. Left about twelve, and took a sitting with Graham, who begs for another. Sir James Stuart stood bottle-holder on this occasion.

Had rather an unfavourable account of the pictures of James Stuart of Dunearn, which are to be sold. I had promised to pick up one or two for the Duke of Buccleuch. Came home and wrote a leaf or two. I shall be soon done with the second volume of _Anne of Geierstein_. I cannot persuade myself to the obvious risk of satisfying the public, although I cannot so well satisfy myself. I am like Beaumont and Fletcher's old Merrythought who could not be persuaded that there was a chance of his wanting meat. I never came into my parlour, said he, but I found the cloth laid and dinner ready; surely it will be always thus. Use makes perfectness.[245]

My reflections are of the same kind; and if they are unlogical they are perhaps not the less comfortable. Fretting and struggling does no good.

Wrote to Miss Margaret Ferguson a letter of condolence.

_January_ 28.--Breakfasted, for a wonder, abroad with Hay Drummond, whose wife appears a pretty and agreeable little woman. We wors.h.i.+pped his tutelar deity, the Hercules, and saw a good model of the Hercules Bibax, or the drunken Hercules. Graham and Sir James Stuart were there.

Home-baked bread and soldier's coffee were the treat. I came home; and Sir Robert Dundas having taken my duty at the Court, I wrote for some time, but not much. Burke the murderer hanged this morning. The mob, which was immense, demanded Knox and Hare, but though greedy for more victims, received with shouts the solitary wretch who found his way to the gallows out of five or six who seem not less guilty than he. But the story begins to be stale, although I believe a doggerel ballad upon it would be popular, how brutal soever the wit. This is the progress of human pa.s.sions. We e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.e, exclaim, hold up to Heaven our hand, like the rustic Phidyle[246]--next morning the mood changes, and we dance a jig to the tune which moved us to tears. Mr. Bell sends me a specimen of a historical novel, but he goes not the way to write it; he is too general, and not sufficiently minute. It is not easy to convey this to an author, with the necessary attention to his feelings; and yet, in good faith and sincerity, it must be done.

_January_ 29.--I had a vacant day once more by the kindness of Sir Robert, unasked, but most kindly afforded. I have not employed it to much purpose. I wrote six pages to Croker,[247] who is busied with a new edition of Boswell's _Life of Johnson_, to which most entertaining book he hopes to make large additions from Mrs. Piozzi, Hawkins and other sources. I am bound by many obligations to do as much for him as I can, which can only respect the Scottish Tour. I wrote only two or three pages of _Anne_. I am

"----- as one who in a darksome way Doth walk with fear and dread."

But walk I must, and walk forward too, or I shall be benighted with a vengeance. After dinner, to compromise matters with my conscience, I wrote letters to Mr. Bell, Mrs. Hughes, and so forth; thus I concluded the day with a sort of busy idleness. This will not do. By c.o.c.k and pye it will not.

_January_ 30.--Mr. Stuart breakfasted with me, a grand-nephew of Lady Louisa's, a very pleasing young gentleman. The coach surprised me by not calling. _Will_ it be for the Martyrdom? I trow it will, yet, strange to say, I cannot recollect if it is a regular holiday or not.

"Uprouse ye then, my merry, merry men, And use it as ye may."

I wrote in the morning, and went at one o'clock to a meeting of country gentlemen, about bringing the direct road from London down by Jedburgh, said to be the nearest line by fifty miles. It is proposed the pleasant men of Teviotdale should pay, not only their own share,--that is, the expense of making the road through our own country, but also the expense of making the road under the Ellsdon Trust in Northumberland, where the English would positively do nothing. I stated this to the meeting as an act of Quixotry. If it be an advantage, which, unless to individuals, may be doubted, it is equally one to Northumberland as to Roxburgh, therefore I am clear that we should go "acquals."

I think I have maybe put a spoke in the wheel. The raising the statute labour of Roxburgh to an oppressive extent, to make roads in England, is, I think, jimp legal, and will be much complained of by the poorer heritors. Henry of Harden dines with me _tete-a-tete_, excepting the girls.

_January_ 31.--I thought I had opened a vein this morning and that it came freely, but the demands of art have been more than I can bear. I corrected proofs before breakfast, went to Court after that meal; was busy till near one o'clock. Then I went to Cadell's, where they are preparing to circulate the prospectus of the magnum, which will have all the effect of surprise on most people. I sat to Mr. Graham till I was quite tired, then went to Lady Jane, who is getting better. Then here at four, but fit for nothing but to bring up this silly Diary.

The corpse of the murderer Burke is now lying in state at the College, in the anatomical cla.s.s, and all the world flock to see him. Who is he that says that we are not ill to please in our objects of curiosity? The strange means by which the wretch made money are scarce more disgusting than the eager curiosity with which the public have licked up all the carrion details of this business.

I trifled with my work. I wonder how Johnson set himself doggedly to it--to a work of imagination it seems quite impossible, and one's brain is at times fairly addled. And yet I have felt times when sudden and strong exertion would throw off all this mistiness of mind, as a north wind would disperse it.

"Blow, blow, thou northern wind."[248]

Nothing more than about two or three pages. I went to the Parliament House to-day, but had little to do. I sat to Mr. Graham the last time, Heaven be praised! If I be not known in another age, it will not be for want of pictures. We dined with Mr. Wardlaw Ramsay and Lady Anne--a fine family. There was little done in the way of work except correcting proofs. The bile affects me, and makes me vilely drowsy when I should be most awake. Met at Mr. Wardlaw's several people I did not know. Looked over c.u.mnor Hall by Mr. Usher Tighe of Oxford. I see from the inscription on Tony Foster's tomb that he was a skilful planter, amongst other fas.h.i.+onable accomplishments.

FOOTNOTES:

[232] Milton's _Paradise Lost_, Bk. i.

[233] See Cases in Court of Session, vol. vii. S. p. 527.

[234] John Graham, who afterwards a.s.sumed the name of Gilbert; born 1794, died 1866.

He was at this time painting Sir Walter for the Royal Society of Edinburgh. When the portrait was finished it was placed in the rooms of the Society, where it still hangs. The artist retained in his own collection a duplicate, with some slight variations, which his widow presented to the National Portrait Gallery, London, in 1867.

[235] Sir Walter, in common with the majority of his contemporaries, evidently believed that Dr. Robert Knox was partly responsible for the West Port atrocities, but it is only just to the memory of the talented anatomist to say that an independent and influential committee, after a careful examination, reported on March 13th, 1829, that there was no evidence showing that he or his a.s.sistants knew that murder had been committed, but the committee thought that more care should have been exercised in the reception of the bodies at the Anatomical Cla.s.s-room.

Lord c.o.c.kburn, who was one of the counsel at the trial of Burke, in writing of these events, remarks: "All our anatomists incurred a most unjust and very alarming, though not an unnatural, odium; Dr. Knox in particular, against whom not only the anger of the populace, but the condemnation of more intelligent persons, was specially directed. But, tried in reference to the invariable and the necessary practice of the profession, our anatomists were spotlessly correct, and Knox the most correct of them all."

At this date Dr. Knox was the most popular teacher in the Medical School at Edinburgh, and as his cla.s.s-room could not contain more than a third of his students, he had to deliver his lectures twice or thrice daily.

The odium attached to his name might have been removed in time had his personal character stood as high as his professional ability, but though he remained in Edinburgh until 1841 he never recovered his position there, and for the last twenty years of his life this once brilliant teacher subsisted as best he could in London by his pen, and as an itinerant lecturer. He died in 1862.

[236] _King John_, Act iv. So. 2.

[237] Archibald, second Lord Douglas, who died in 1844.

[238] John Greens.h.i.+elds, self-taught sculptor. See _Life_, vol. ix. p.

281-288. He died at the age of forty in 1835.

[239] _As You Like It_, Act II. Sc. 3.

[240] Sir Henry Seton Steuart's work on _Planting_ was reviewed by Scott in the _Quarterly_.--See _Misc. Prose Works,_ vol. xxi. Sir H. Steuart died in March 1836.

[241] See letter in _Life_, vol. ix. pp. 281-287.

[242] Originally published in London in 8vo, 1764. This contemplated edition does not appear to have been printed.

[243] _Ante_, p. 118 n.

[244] _As You Like It_, Act II. Sc. 3.