Ragged Lion

by Allan Massie

  ‘No,’ I replied (indeed lied) cautiously.

  He then recounted an experience he had had there, which I shall not repeat, it being his story, not mine (and in any case I have forgotten the details); but the gist of it was that he had been made intensely aware of the presence of evil.

  ‘Let us go there at once,’ I said; which we did, but unfortunately the sound of rock music from a nearby night-club was sufficient to obliterate any supernatural resonances there might be.

  Nevertheless the coincidence was sufficiently remarkable to be persuasive – I mean, the coincidence between what he described and what Sir Walter experienced or imagined.

  I might note one other curious coincidence. At one point the author of the memoir – that is to say, Sir Walter – in discussing his medievalism remarks that future scholars would come to know far more about the Middle Ages than he did, but that he had done things – such as taking part in cavalry manoeuvres, building a castellated house, etc – of which later scholars were likely to be personally ignorant. This point is also made by A. N. Wilson in his admirable and enthusiastic study The Laird of Abbotsford; and since Mr Wilson cannot possibly have seen the memoir when he wrote his book, he is to be congratulated on his percipience.

  Three final points: I owe a debt to all those who have encouraged me in this task, or who over the years have contributed to my knowledge of Scott, and enthusiasm for his life and work. There are a great many, but they must certainly include the Contessa—; Mrs Patricia Maxwell-Scott and Dame Jean Maxwell-Scott; Judy Steel; Robert and Elizabeth Langlands; Robert Paterson; Professor David Daiches, Paul H. Scott, Owen Dudley Edwards; Dr Eric Anderson, Dr David Hewitt, A.N. Wilson, Euan Cameron, and Giles Gordon.

  Second, I take issue with Charles Scott, whose speculations are otherwise of the greatest interest, on one point. He observes that his father sometimes spoke in his last months of returning to poetry, and writes: ‘The examples of verse here – often perhaps carelessly and perfunctorily thrown off – may not represent him at his finest’ (an opinion from which I do not dissent) ‘but they are sufficiently so to suggest, to me at least, that he would not have made the return in vain.’ I fear that filial loyalty may have impaired Charles’s critical judgement, and I would expect most readers to agree with me rather than with him.

  Finally, while I was engaged on the work, a Cabinet Minister (for such men do – whether you like it or not – exist) expressed his enthusiasm for Scott, and suggested to me that a revival must be due. I expect the great Edinburgh Edition of the novels to provoke that, but if this work, which you are about to read, does anything to encourage it, then the hours of painful scrutiny of a flowery hand and of close examination of sometimes less than wholly coherent English, or Scots (either carelessly written in the first place, as was often Sir Walter’s wont, for he relied much on his copyists and on James Ballantyne as proofreader, or simply misunderstood or ill-transcribed), will have been more than worthwhile. If this book persuades anyone to turn to Scott’s novels, both I and that intelligent reader will be well rewarded.

  Allan Massie

  Editorial Note: I have, for the convenience of the reader, given a title to each chapter (there is none in the manuscript), and, where appropriate, added a date which refers either to the events narrated or described in the chapter, or, more speculatively, to the year in which I have judged it may have been written. (A.M.)

  __________

  * Camorra, camorriste: The Neapolitan Mafia.

  1

  Reflections, 1826

  His Majesty, whom I believe, despite a wealth of testimony ad adversum (as we say in Scots Law) to be a good man – or at least a man whose inclination is to virtue, though the winds of life, fortune, fate, what have you, have all too frequently blawn his weathercock in a clean contrair direction – has now fallen prey, they tell me, to delusions. He has taken to relating with a heist of detail, how he led his regiment of Hussars – the 10th, as I recall – in a desperate charge at Waterloo. Then he will turn to the Duke and invite him to confirm the tale of his exploits. The Duke, being both courtier and ironist – without which latter attribute it were impossible for any honest man to be a courtier – then inclines his head, and remarks: ‘I have frequently heard Your Majesty say so.’ Now some will see in this only matter for comedy; moralists, an example of the degeneracy of princes. But, gazing out across the night sky of this divided city of Edinburgh, with the lum-hats rattling in what James Hogg would call ‘a warlock-bearing wind’, I see neither of these things. There is the possibility, I observe, that His Majesty with whom in my time I have cracked many a jest, kens fine what he is doing, and there is the possibility that what some call his ‘delusion’ is but a species of romance. For the distinction between what is and what is not is one that has puzzled philosophers at least since Plato, and when Dr Johnson sought to refute Bishop Berkeley’s questioning of the reality of matter by giving a dunt with his foot to a stone, the refutation only holds good if you first accept the reality of the boot on the good Doctor’s foot. These are strange thoughts for a man such as I perhaps, but then I have set so many beings skipping into a semblance of life from my study here or that at my beloved Abbotsford, that I may be forgiven in my night watches for questioning the nature of reality.

  This would astonish my friends, for they regard me, I think – and believe I do not flatter myself – as a steady long-headed man. I see myself in that light also – some of the time. And why not? I have never been carried away by my renown, which I do not think ill-deserved, and for that reason may congratulate myself on the possession of a bottom of common sense. When I assure folk that in the great scale of things, literary fame and literary achievement are not worth a docken, I speak sincerely. On the other hand, when the characters of my imagination rise before me, I find it easier to converse with Jeannie Deans than I have ever done with Lady Scott. And where would that strange thing fit in Horatio’s philosophy? Or in any notion of reality?

  I am known too as a sociable man, a welcoming host and not unwelcome guest; but my happiest hours have been spent alone on a braeside with a book and a bannock and my dog. How would the fine ladies who smile to receive me in their drawing-rooms feel to hear that? What would any of us feel if our secret thoughts were spoken?

  I have been thinking, often, of late, of a friend of my youth, Richard Heber. He was a man of great cultivation, charm of manner and address, who talked sense and sound morality. He had wit and gaiety, and passed everywhere, or generally, as a good man. He shared my antiquarian interests and I dedicated one of the verse epistles in Marmion to him. He rose in the world, well-esteemed, and became Member of Parliament for the University of Oxford. And this man, of whom only good was thought, was detected in unnatural practices – with stable-boys, as it was said – and so, exile, disgraced, to Boulogne, then Naples, I suppose, where his vice is said to be freely practised, an object of contempt, ridicule and disgust. But to himself? Is he, I wonder, the same man in his own mind? I cannot believe otherwise. I have never been subject to that temptation, but the thought of Heber now makes me think it a mercy that our secret thoughts are hidden from each other. If at our social table we could see what passes in each bosom around we would seek dens and caverns to shun human society. Lord keep us from all temptation for we cannot be our own shepherd.

  I write that sentence easily; and then I think of Heber in one of the rambles we took in our youth and of how we arrived at the inn at Grasmere, and of how he joked with the ostler – a comely lad, as I noticed even then – to take good care of his horse, or he would be obliged to chastise him; and then a look passed between them which I interpreted as an expression of good humour and mutual regard. And now I find myself pondering the significance of that exchange of words and glances. I remember the dinner that followed, with Wordsworth, though not the conversation, though I suppose Wordsworth spoke of his poetry, and its excellence – a habitual subject with him and one for which I do not reproach him, for his poetry is e
xcellent and there were few enough ready to say so, so that he felt it behoved him to supply for himself the praise he considered his due. I remember this, as I say, and the excellence of the saddle of mutton we consumed, but none of it is as clear in my mind as that exchange between Heber and the boy. Yet even here I pause, for that memory was buried for years, and has only come forth in its clarity since I heard of poof Heber’s disgrace.

  These are strange thoughts for a ruined man, and perhaps perplex me now to divert me from my task: my novel Woodstock – a tale of Cavaliers and Roundheads which it is sair wark to set in motion.

  I made my early books out of my own being; now I make them out of other books. ‘Hard pounding, gentlemen,’ as the Duke said at Waterloo.

  I have ever been a puzzle to myself, and if I divert myself now from my task, it may be on account of a consciousness that I have not long left to me to settle my accounts – not those accounts with which I am indeed deeply and properly concerned, my arrangements with my creditors, but the more profound and essential accounts with – I hardly know what – my soul? my Maker?

  What I cannot now deny to myself is what in the days when I trusted myself to my imagination I dared not contemplate, for fear that examination would stifle what was most vital in me; but which, now that is moribund, I can no longer shrink from facing: the thorough and primitive duality of man. I employ the word ‘primitive’, not as my friend Francis Jeffrey and his troop of Whig reviewers might employ it: to denote a condition from which the progress of civilization has set us free; but rather as something inescapable, something that is of our necessary and enduring essence. Two natures – again, I think of poor Heber – appear to me to contend in the field of our very consciousness; so that if we – no, I – can be said to be either, it is only because unavoidably I am at root, and rootedly, both. When Christ prayed that this cup should pass from his lips, and knew that it could not do so, he spoke for all suffering humanity as surely as when he hung on the cross.

  I caught my face in the glass on my return from the Court this evening, and saw in it what I feared to see: the madness of Lear, though it is not my daughters but my debts and my dreams that have brought me to my present pass. I make a fine show still in the public view – fier comme un Ecossais – but, alone, I call for cataracts to howl.

  I made a fine show this morning even. I was accosted at the Court by little Mr Thomson of the Bank of Scotland.

  ‘Ahem, Sir Walter,’ says the shilpit cratur, then takes a pinch of snuff.

  ‘Ahem, Sir Walter,’ he tries again, ‘the Bank of Scotland,’ he says, ‘the Bank of Scotland’ – pronouncing the name with the same reverence that my friend and gamekeeper Tom Purdie used to bring to talk of ‘fush’ – ‘the Bank of Scotland is not altogether happy with the arrangements for the settlement of your affairs that have been proposed . . . not altogether happy.’

  Pinch of snuff.

  ‘Proposed and agreed, Mr Thomson . . .’

  ‘Nevertheless, Sir Walter, nevertheless, the Bank is of the opinion, having taken close cognizance of the proposed arrangements that they are insufficient, not wholly conversant with requirements, if you follow me, Sir Walter.’

  ‘Mr Thomson,’ I said, ‘I do not follow you.’

  ‘The security’, he says, ‘is deemed insufficient, conseedering the huge sum in question. In short, the Bank is determined, having taken, as I say, full cognizance of all matters relevant and material, that the marriage settlement which secures the property and heritage rights of Abbotsford for your son, Major Scott, should be reduced. That is to say, reduced.’

  Pinch of snuff.

  ‘Mr Thomson,’ I said, speaking – I hope – calmly, ‘the Bank must understand this. I am prepared to meet my obligations. I am ready to work myself to the grave to do so. But if the Bank presses me harder than the law requires, then I shall avail myself of the shield of the law, and allow myself to be declared bankrupt, with the security for my dependents that would ensure . . .’

  ‘Oh crivvens, Sir Walter,’ he says, startled out of gentility, ‘you’d never do that, Sir Walter.’

  ‘And why not, Mr Thomson?’

  ‘The shame, Sir Walter, the shame, you’d never surely expose yourself to the shame of a public sequestration . . .’

  ‘Mr Thomson, the Bank should understand this. I am ashamed of my debts, but not of their public recognition. The shame lies in the condition, in that fact, not in its acknowlegement. Perhaps you will be so kind as to report this to the Bank, and assure them that they have not taken, as you put it, full cognizance of the circumstances, which, you may remind them, include an agreement with which all interested parties have already concurred.’

  So he hummed and he hawed, and shifted from foot to foot, and dabbed some more snuff up his nose, and assured me that he would convey my response to the Bank and trusted that he would be able to persuade them, etc, etc . . .

  And I trust he will. But it smacks of sharp practice, and I’ll have none of it.

  Well, things maun be as they may, but if they press me over hard, they will learn that the Scotts were aye fiercest in the roughest fight. Agere et pati Romanum est: of all schools commend me to the Stoicks.

  So, here I stand, Walter Scott, Baronet, of Abbotsford in the County of Selkirkshire, near widower and certain debtor, fifty-five, given to attacks of giddiness, and with my future as bright or grim as the Fife coast on a day of November haar. But in my heart I am still the lame bairn that made up stories for himself in the dark to keep the bogles off; and in doing so invited them in and made them dance.

  Oh merrily sang the fiddler’s tune

  To the company filled with mirth

  But as merrily sounded the fiddle’s note

  When the dance was that of death.

  It occurs to me that if His Majesty really believes that he led the charge of his Hussars at Waterloo, he is a better man for the desire his lie expresses.

  2

  Childhood and Youth, 1771–87

  Every Scotsman has his pedigree. It is indeed often our only possession, along with our pride and our poverty. I was not lacking in pride of pedigree, though that is scarcely a matter that affects a child. Indeed it is as age creeps upon one, and one feels one’s own faculties decay, that interest in ancestry commonly grows strong, awoken in many cases, I am sure, by observation of one’s own descendants. But childhood is a state, not a narrative. Though time may often hang more heavily on a child than on the grown man, the child is yet in a singular fashion free of time, for the future is at once unimaginable and without limits. Perhaps this is what Wordsworth means when he tells us that ‘heaven lies about us in our infancy’.

  But my own infancy was marked, and therefore interrupted, by illness. I was born in a foetid wynd in the Old Town of Edinburgh, where the houses leaned so close across to each other that – it was said – a man could stretch out his hand and shake that of his neighbour on the other side of the alley. Brothers and sisters died around me – six, I think – and I myself contracted a species of paralysis which, leaving me lame, has certainly influenced the course of my life. But for it, I am certain I should have been a soldier, for all my life, till recently, at least, my heart has been stirred by tales of martial deeds and set alight by the sound of martial music. Now tales of gallantry are more like to set the ready tears of old age flowing.

  There is something to be said for childhood illness. It throws the sufferer back on himself. I early became a voracious reader, and stored my mind with legends, history and song; tales of chivalry were most to my taste and did much to form my temperament.

  It happened too that I was sent to Bath to take the waters, which the doctors believed might alleviate my condition. It gave me, young as I was, experience of a softer, more polite way of life and social intercourse than was to be found in our ruder Edinburgh. It was not wasted on me, and as a consequence I have never indulged in the folly of contemning our southern neighbours. On the contrary, I have loved England ever si
nce, second only to Scotland, and curiously this love was never shaken by what I learned of the long and heroic resistance which throughout more than two centuries my ancestral compatriots conducted against the threat of English dominance. It has seemed to me all my life that in the circumstances of the time, considering the natural tendency of warlike kings to try to add to their dominions, the threat was as natural as the resistance; and no matter for either praise or blame. But I do not know if I would have quickly come to this conclusion if I had not enjoyed that sojourn in the genteel society of Bath, which I felt, deeply, even as a young child.

  I passed other years of my infancy at my grandfather’s farm of Sandyknowe, in the shadow of Smailholm Tower. This grandfather, Robert Scott, was long remembered as a notable judge of sheep and cattle: a good peaceable man, whom I recall but dimly for he died when I was less than four years old. (That was before my visit to Bath.) In my memory, he wore the same expression that I catch in my shaving-glass, and I have known this give me a jolt when I have seen a certain tender expression cross my face, at a sudden remembered thought; it is the way he looked on me as a bairn.

  Sandyknowe stands on a ridge above the Tweed, a few miles from Dryburgh Abbey where in time I shall be laid to rest, being entitled to a grave there on account of my familial connection with the house of Haliburton. I have been known to say that if I am a poet – which Francis Jeffrey has taken leave to doubt – it was childhood there that made me one, for from Sandyknowe the world opened before me as a broad, wind-blown country, with a prospect of a long twenty mile past the three-headed Eildons and on to the line of the blue and distant Cheviots. It was impossible to gaze on that, or to know the ruined splendor of our Border abbeys, without acquiring a sense of the past crowding upon me: in my dreams I saw our Merse forayers setting forth to harry the lands across the Border; I saw English armies marching up the old road that the Romans had built, and in their shadowy rear the legions themselves. Life at Sandyknowe was pastoral: the ewe-milkers carried me up the crags above the farm and I knew every sheep in the flock by name. Yet even on a summer evening, when the sun slipped behind the Eildons, shedding a soft yellow-gold on the gentle landscape, I knew how often this Arcadian mood had been cruelly broken in the past.