by John Buchan
The book opens in the high romantic vein in the Black Bear at Cumnor with one of the best tavern scenes in the novels. The central interest depends upon two factors — the mystery of two houses, the crumbling manor of Cumnor which had caught Scott’s boyish imagination in Mickle’s verses, and the baronial magnificence of Kenilworth; and the character of Elizabeth the Queen. It is at Cumnor and Kenilworth that his touch is surest, for these places clamoured for the appropriate romance. To people them he has borrowed a motley of figures from history and the contemporary drama and local tradition — Leicester and Sussex and Walter Raleigh: Giles Gosling, Goldthread the mercer, Miles Lambourne the drunken mercenary, Wayland Smith and Flibbertigibbet. Among the episodes two seem to me to reach a high level of drama. One is the interview at Greenwich between Sussex and Leicester in the Queen’s presence, when the reader holds his breath at the oscillations of fortune; the other is the famous meeting of Elizabeth, Amy Robsart and Leicester in the garden at Kenilworth, where for a moment the truth trembles on the brink of revelation. In the sheer craftsmanship of suspense Scott never bettered these scenes.
The character-drawing is ingenious, and sometimes subtle. Elizabeth is exhibited as as royal as Mary, though she lacks something of Mary’s glamour. Leicester is not the historical Dudley, but his weakness is convincingly portrayed, and Sussex is admirable. Amy is the tragic ballad heroine, who is vivid because of the vividness of her sorrows. Most of the minor figures are good, especially Lambourne the adventurer. The two chief villains seem to have strayed from the cast of one of the darker Elizabethan plays. Varney is Scott’s version of Iago, the Italianate bravo whose wickedness is without bounds; but since Scott was never happy with pure evil, I prefer Tony Fire-the-Faggot, who is given some principles in his infamy.
It is a glittering piece of pageantry, wholly successful within its purpose, and if that purpose falls short of Scott’s highest, the bow of Apollo cannot always be kept at stretch. He never set out his antiquarian bric-à-brac more skilfully, or revelled more joyously in the externals of life. But if his understanding was fully engaged in the business, his heart was a little aloof. There is nothing in Kenilworth from Scott’s inmost world except perhaps such a comment as this upon Tressilian’s moods, in which we may find an echo of his own experience: —
Nothing is perhaps more dangerous to the future happiness of men of deep thought and retired habits than the entertaining of a long, early and unfortunate attachment. It frequently sinks so deep into the mind that it becomes their dream by night and their vision by day — mixes itself in every source of interest and enjoyment, and when blighted and withered, it seems as if the springs of the heart were dried up along with it. The aching of the heart, this languishing after a shadow which has lost all the gaiety of its colouring, this dwelling on the remembrance of a dream from which we have been long roughly awakened, is the weakness of a generous heart.
II
The Pirate appeared before the close of 1821, and throughout the winter Scott was busy, apart from the editing of antiquarian reprints, on The Fortunes of Nigel. He had another matter in hand which gave him acute annoyance and which set him publicly in the posture which he liked least, that of apology and apparent timidity. The political partisanship of 1808, against which the Duke of Buccleuch warned him, had mellowed with the success of British arms, and after Waterloo had almost disappeared. In Edinburgh he lived on friendly terms with the older Whigs and with many of the younger ones. But the trial of Queen Caroline in 1820 stirred up some of the ancient antagonisms, and the distress and unrest in the land seriously alarmed Scott about the future of law and order. He had the fantastic idea that the miners of Northumberland might somehow join hands with the Glasgow weavers, and the Buccleuch legion, at whose recruitment he laboured, was designed to bar the road. Now he suddenly found himself involved in a shoddy newspaper scandal.
[The Beacon]
Scott had never any relish for journalistic savageries. He had protested vigorously against the excesses of Blackwood, and had striven to wean Lockhart from his association with them. “Revere yourself,” he told his son-in-law, “and think you were born to do your country better service than in this species of warfare.” Lockhart had taken the good advice, the more so as he had been shocked by the duel in February 1821 arising out of certain attacks on himself in the London Magazine, in which the editor had been killed by his friend Christie. Scott pressed upon Lockhart the necessity of breaking from the “mother of mischief,” and Lockhart was never again involved in the Blackwood quarrels. But the foundation of the Scotsman had restarted the newspaper war in Edinburgh, and in January 1821 a paper called the Beacon was launched, a group of Edinburgh Tories, including the Lord Advocate, guaranteed the capital, and Scott was persuaded against his better judgment to join in the bond for a small sum. The paper ran for less than eight months and was distinguished for what Lord Cockburn calls “political cannibalism”; it was wretchedly and amateurishly edited, and when the outcry against it became formidable the guarantors cancelled their bond and the Beacon died.
But in its short life it did an infinity of mischief. Cockburn thought that Scott was deeply to blame: “the happiness of the city was disturbed, persons he had long professed and truly felt friendship for were vilified, and all this he could have prevented by a word or a look.” Apart from the mistake of the initial guarantee, Scott was innocent, for he detested the paper and would not look at it, but he was as much aggrieved by the manner of its ending as by its conduct. To Erskine he wrote that he was “terribly malcontent.” “I was dragged into the bond against all remonstrances I could make, and now they have allowed me no vote with regard to standing or flying.... Our friends went into the thing like fools and have come out very like cowards. I was never so sick of a transaction in my life.” He was sad and sulky, he wrote to Constable, because he thought that “the seniors might have been mediators, not fugitives,” and he added that he expected daily to hear that someone had been killed. There was an excellent chance of this, for the lawyer Gibson (later Sir James Gibson-Craig of Riccarton) proposed to challenge Scott, enlisted Lord Lauderdale as his second, and only withdrew on being assured that Scott had no personal share in the libels. Tragedy came a few months later, when some verses in the Sentinel, the Beacon’s Glasgow successor, led to the death in a duel of Scott’s friend, Sir Alexander Boswell, at the hands of James Stuart of Dunearn.
In January 1822 Will Erskine went at last to the Bench as Lord Kinnedder, an appointment for which his friends had long schemed and pled. The late spring of that year was another landmark in Scott’s financial history, for James Ballantyne was readmitted as a partner in the printing business. In 1816, as we have seen, he had been made a salaried official, and Scott had taken the firm wholly on his shoulders. It was burdened with a personal debt of James to the extent of £3000, and a mass of floating bills, the debris of the publishing business, which were partly in John Ballantyne’s name, and which amounted to about £10,000. During the five years between 1816 and 1821 the printing shop, owing to Scott’s novels, had been making reasonable profits — about £2000 a year. When at Whitsuntide, 1821, the partnership was reconstituted, Scott laid down, in what was called a “missive letter,” the terms of the new arrangement. He made himself personally liable for all bills then current, apart from James Ballantyne’s special debt, which was still in the neighbourhood of £3000; the profits in future were to be equally divided between the partners, but it was agreed that each should limit his annual drawings to £500, the balance going to discharge debt or increase stock.
[Scott’s financial methods]
Now at this date the floating bills against the firm amounted to nearly £27,000. How had the increase come about, when the actual printing business was running at a profit? Partly from the interest on and the renewal of the old bills, partly no doubt from James’s slipshod financial methods, but mainly because Scott had used the firm as the medium of raising advances for his personal expenditure. During
these years, apart from capital sums received for copyrights, he had been making from his novels an income of at least £10,000. But none of this was used to reduce the printing house’s gross liabilities; on the contrary these liabilities were steadily increased by his drafts on the firm to meet the cost of his princely hospitality, his purchases of land, and his Abbotsford building. Scott considered that most of his outlay was in the nature of a sound investment, that, since Abbotsford must one day be finished, that outlay would cease, and that in a year or two by his pen he could clear his feet. He seems to have believed that, if necessary he could live on his professional and private income and utilize his literary earnings for the rapid extinction of debt. It is a mistake to assume, I think, that he was in the dark about his financial position. The “missive letter” to James Ballantyne shows that he could be a careful man of business, and he kept a precise record of all the bills he drew. He was deliberately overspending, because he was assured that he had the power, when he chose, to put his affairs on an equilibrium. In the year 1821 he had, according to Lockhart, already spent £29,000 on the purchase of land, he had an assured income of at least £2500, and he had earned £80,000 by his pen since 1811. On the other side there were the Ballantyne liabilities of £27,000, and overdrafts on Constable to an amount which cannot be ascertained.
He was living at a time when the machinery of credit was still in process of creation, and few, even among the bankers, had any clear conception of its true basis. There was great scarcity of coin, and there was an inadequate supply of cash even in the form of banknotes; value “floated ethereally in bills and promissory notes from man to man, calling at the banks for transmutation when and so long as that could be effected.” Scottish banking had been built up largely on the basis of cash-credits, under which overdrafts were guaranteed by a man’s friends, and in Scotland credit had become more of a communal business than elsewhere. Scott accepted the system as he found it and did not trouble to ask awkward questions. He drew bills on the Ballantyne firm which Constable backed; he drew bills on Constable for work not yet done; and always there were the counter-bills, whereby accommodation granted to one party was set off by a like accommodation granted to the other. The consequence was that the true meaning of each transaction was obscured. When cash was received the temptation was to apply it for some purpose for which cash was obligatory, like the masons’ accounts at Abbotsford, instead of paying off bills which could be easily renewed. So long as a man was able to work and in good repute there need be no hitch, but ill-health, death, or the disaster of a colleague might bring down the whole edifice in ruins. If Constable failed, the Ballantyne firm would follow, and with it Scott; if Scott fell sick or died, the Ballantyne house would go, and Constable, though he had heavily insured Scott’s life, might not survive the loss of an author on whose work he had staked so heavily. All the fraternity had executed heavy mortgages on the future; they could pay the mortgage interest, and, if the fates were kind, might eventually redeem them, but any sudden calamity would send the fabric crashing.
In Scott’s defence it should be said that he believed that in his land, houses, and personal possessions he had assets which would meet all his liabilities, while his brother-in-law’s legacy had made provision for his family. Also he trusted implicitly in the soundness of Constable’s firm. He sold him the copyrights of his novels in batches, and did not receive the full payment, which should have warned him that the great publisher had no greater command of ready money than himself. Various circumstances had combined to embarrass Constable. The retirement of one partner and the death of another had withdrawn from the business considerable capital sums, and the provident Mr Cadell had many hours of acute alarm. Constable’s reach was apt to exceed his grasp, and he suffered the fate of all pioneers in having often to wait too long for his harvest. His pride would not allow him to reduce the printing orders of the Edinburgh Review and the Encyclopædia Britannica, even when the trade was glutted, with the result that he was often left with unsaleable remainders. During the years 1821 and 1822 he had to spend most of his time for his health’s sake in the south of England, and his letters to Cadell show the trouble that he had with the booksellers over dead stock.
[Constable’s optimism]
But he was like a drunken man, who can avoid a fall only so long as he keeps running. Scott was his main support, and it is probable that he consistently overpaid him, for there was always the dread of a rival Murray or Longman in the field. Moreover, both he and Cadell encouraged Scott to a more rapid output, not only of novels but of poetry and miscellaneous work. They gave him £1000 for Halidon Hill, which was the task of two rainy mornings. Any loss on the swings would be made up by the profits on some new roundabout. “I would as soon stop a winning horse,” wrote Cadell, “as a successful author with the public in his favour.” With such encouragement it was not unnatural for Scott to take a roseate view of the future. The Ballantyne debt was supported by Constable, and Constable, though his bills were long-dated, seemed to be going from strength to strength. His letters from the south — and it was in the south of course that the main market lay — had been full of confident forecasts; they had repeatedly declared that an unsatiated public demanded more and still more from the Waverley fields. Scott felt his creative power as strong as ever; he could therefore complete Abbotsford with an easy conscience — perhaps even buy Faldonside — and then straighten out his affairs; there was enough money in prospect for everything.
So it was with a new feeling of security that he turned to the heavy duties of the summer. The Fortunes of Nigel appeared in the end of May and was well received. Constable predicted that it would be the most popular of all, and Sydney Smith, who had become very critical of the novels, admitted that it would sustain the reputation of the author and not “impair the very noble and honourable estate which he has in his brains.” The smack which carried the London orders reached the Thames on a Sunday, the cargo was cleared at once, and by half-past ten on Monday morning 7000 copies were in the booksellers’ hands.
That summer Scott was busy on Peveril of the Peak, but July and August were useless for work, since George IV had announced his intention of visiting Edinburgh, the first reigning monarch to set foot on Scottish soil since Charles I, and the only prince of the house of Hanover since the ill-omened Cumberland. Had Scott lived in another age he might have been a great figure in statecraft, guiding a monarch through difficult places by his own tact, sagacity and insight into human nature. He had that talent for affairs which is compounded of organizing power and the rare gift of managing men. The visit seemed to him to be an occasion of high public import. The last hope of Jacobitism had died with the Cardinal of York, but there was no popular sentiment for the reigning family north of the Border. If that could be created, if the old monarchical feeling of Scotland could be stirred and her pride gratified by a sense of possession in her sovereign, much might be done for the cause of both Scottish nationalism and Scottish unity. To be sure, it was something of a gamble. The trial of the Queen had predisposed the rank and file of the people against George, the notorious irregularities of his life had alienated the serious classes, and politics, as we have seen, were at the moment full of bitterness. To make certain of a national welcome, the rivalries of grandees would have to be harmonized, and the conflict of endless local interests smoothed away. If the visit was in any sense a fiasco, it would be nothing short of a public calamity.
[Visit of George IV]
The heavy end of the business fell upon Scott, since he was the only man competent to arrange a national pageant. All through July he laboured at the details of the reception, setting the proper parts for Highland chiefs and Lowland lairds and Edinburgh bailies — a heavy task, for Lord Kinnedder was dying, killed by a baseless slander which broke a too sensitive heart. Every moment that Scott could spare he spent at his bedside, but on the very day of the King’s coming Erskine died. In the midst of the festivities Scott attended his funeral at Queensfer
ry, more dejected, Lockhart tells us, than he had ever known him before, and he had to play his part in the ensuing pageant with a burdened mind. “If ever a pure spirit,” he wrote, “quitted this vale of tears, it was William Erskine’s. I must turn to and see what can be done about getting some pension for his daughters.”
The royal visit was an abounding success. Scott had little admiration for the King, but he knew his abilities and his gift of surface bonhomie, and he was determined that the cause of monarchy should not suffer in its representative. Nor did it, for George rose gallantly to his part. This stout gentleman of sixty did his best to fill the rôle of the Prince Charming who three-quarters of a century before had danced in Holyroodhouse, and he had the wisdom to lean heavily on Scott’s knowledge and good sense. The royal yacht, escorted by warships, arrived at Leith on August 14th in a downpour of rain, and Scott was received on board with enthusiasm. “Sir Walter Scott!” the King cried, “The man in Scotland I most wish to see!” and he pledged him in a bumper of whisky. Scott begged the glass as a memento and deposited it in his pocket. When he returned to Castle Street he found that Crabbe the poet had arrived unexpectedly; in the exuberance of his greeting he flung himself into a chair beside him, there was an ominous crackle, and fragments of the precious keepsake were dug out of the pocket in his skirts. Crabbe’s presence at the festivities, like that of a sober parson at a war dance of Indian braves, was one of the major comic elements in the scene; another was the Rabelaisian parody by a Glasgow weaver of Scott’s song of welcome, “Carle, now the King’s come,” which was popular among the irreverent.
But the intricate programme passed off without a hitch. Half Scotland flowed into Edinburgh to watch the royal entry, when Scott, splendid in Campbell trews, was driven in a coach and four by Peter Mathieson, not less splendid in a cocked hat and a flaxen wig. Scott attended daily at the royal table at Dalkeith in his capacity as master of ceremonies. There were levees at Holyroodhouse, and a state procession to the Castle when Scott stood in the crowd with Sir Robert Peel; there were lengthy and splendid dinners; there was a command performance at the theatre, and a solemn service in St Giles’s church. The King wore a kilt of Royal Stuart tartan, the laird of Garth being responsible for his toilet, but the most conspicuous figure in his entourage was not Glengarry or Macleod, but a London alderman, Sir William Curtis, who made a bigger, fatter and gaudier Highlandman than his Majesty. Not till the 29th of August did George embark for the south, after knighting Adam Ferguson and Raeburn the artist. It was to Scott that Sir Robert Peel wrote on the eve of the departure by the King’s command, making him the channel to convey to the Highland chiefs the royal approbation and thanks.