by Allan Massie
Then I drifted back to uneasy sleep, and woke with those lines that are pounding me in my ears:
And were you called to Elfland, cuddy,
Where the white lilies bloom?
Or to that mirk, mirk land, cuddy,
The shades ayont the tomb?
__________
* In the Aberdeenshire dialect, known locally as the Doric, the sound ‘wh’ is pronounced ‘f’. So ‘where’, which is ‘whaur’ in the Borders, becomes ‘far’ in the north-east.
14
Financial Affairs (written c. 1828)
I owe it to myself to give some account of my financial affairs and of the catastrophe which engulfed me. If I find this difficult, it is not only on account of the proper pride which makes me reluctant to divulge my business and my folly to the world, but also because I do not understand them very well myself. I have, since my youth, when my father trained me to do so, been punctilious in the keeping of my personal cash-book, and scarce a day has gone by that I have not entered there my incomings and outgoings. But the larger affairs of business have baffled and bored me, and have therefore, to my shame and present confusion, been neglected. In self-exculpation I can say only this: that I have ever been confident of my ability to earn the money which was advanced to me and which I spent on the building of my house and the enlargement of my estate; all went swimmingly for many years, and might have continued to do so but for the flurry of panicking bulls and bears on the London stockmarket, and the sudden nervous crisis experienced by the banks.
Horace advises us, on the model of Homer, to plunge into a narrative, in medias res. That has rarely been my method, and indeed I know some have complained of my lengthy introduction of a story. So I think I had better abide by my practice, and begin at the beginning.
When I determined against supporting myself by my earnings at the Bar and took on my sheriffship, then my clerkship to the Court of Session, becoming in this way a mere salaried official, with no prospect of increasing my earnings in the main business of my life, I naturally had to look to what I could get by my pen as the main means of establishing myself in that way of life to which I aspired. It was my ambition to become a landed proprietor, both because the prospect pleased me, and because I wished to have property to hand on to my children. I make no apology for this ambition, which is one shared by the common run of mankind, and which I was fortunate enough to be in a position to gratify.
Then it seemed to me good to have my works printed by my old friend James Ballantyne, but, his business requiring capital if he was to handle the full load of my work, it was again natural enough that I should invest the legacy I had inherited from my Uncle Robert by buying a third share in James’s printing firm. There was nothing disreputable in this, but nevertheless, believing that it was no part of the world’s business to know of my pecuniary affairs, I preferred to keep it secret. In retrospect this may have been an error, for it introduced a certain note of unreality into my affairs. The business became a sort of bank from which I could draw, while at the same time its expansion required me, from time to time, either to invest more in it, or to grant a loan against future profits to it. But it served both James and myself well for many years, and I do not believe any of my publishers, especially not Constable, my principal one, had any true cause for complaint.
Constable, I may say, was a great man, in his way, with a genius for his business which excelled any other person in his line in Britain. The Emperor, as he liked to be called – or his Czarish Majesty, as I dubbed him – was a being of inordinate ambition, penetrating vision, and an unusual fertility of invention. It is fair to say that my admiration for him persisted till the very end, but to add that it also exceeded my affection.
Never thinking it a good thing for an author to be bound to a single publisher, and around 1808 or 9 being displeased with the truculence and ill-manners of Constable’s then partner, Alexander Hunter, I was easily tempted to spread my interest wider. And so, with James and his brother John, I established a rival publishing firm, John Ballantyne & Co, in which I invested the greater part of my literary earnings which were not otherwise committed. The success of The Lady of the Lake seemed at first to justify the venture, but subsequent publications, though of literary worth, failed to find public favour, and the house was left with a good deal of stock which had not succeeded in finding a market. (I particularly regret the failure of a History of the Culdee Church, which was a work of true scholarship and historical importance that deserved a happier fate than to be piled, mouldering, in the basement of John’s shop in Hanover Street.)
Within a few months I was aware of the rashness of this venture, and in the winter of 1810 even contemplated a change of direction. There was some talk that Lord Melville, the former Minister for Scotland and the father of my old school-friend, Henry Dundas, might go to India as Governor-General, and in my financial perplexities, I was ready, if he would take me with him, to pitch the Court of Session and the booksellers to the Devil and try my fortune in another climate. Many a Scot had made his fortune in India since Lord Melville first assumed the power of patronage there some quarter of a century earlier, but, even while I was considering the matter, His Lordship died, and so I stuck to the last I knew. This was all the easier because my affairs suddenly improved. From the 1st January 1812, I would at last receive the full stipend for my clerkship, a portion of which had been diverted to the previous incumbent. With my sheriff’s remuneration, and my wife’s income, I could count on some £2,000 a year, and I was confident that, even if there were no profits to be had from the publishing and printing businesses, I could still earn at least another thousand by my pen.
It so happened that the lease of Ashiestiel was almost up, and my attempts to purchase house and estate were in vain. I therefore began to cast around for a suitable lodging, and happened on a little farm on the banks of the Tweed, a mile or so down river from the point where it is joined by the Ettrick water. It was then the property of Dr Douglas, the minister at Galashiels, and I secured it for £4,000, which I obtained by borrowing half from my elder brother John and half from the Ballantyne firm – on the security, I may say, of a poem, of which I had not yet written a line.
My joy at being at last a proprietor in my beloved Borders may well be imagined, and my original intentions for the property were modest, for I could not then foresee that the Author of Waverley would soon open to me a store-house of wealth of undreamed-of proportions. The original purchase did not extend over more than 110 acres, and the farmhouse, or rather cottage, was inadequate even for our simple needs. I therefore promptly had masons in, and the re-modelling of the cottage commenced.
But no sooner did I seem settled than new dangers reared up before me. The year 1813 saw much financial uncertainty throughout the country. Bills were called in, credit restricted and bankruptcies soared. The Ballantyne firms were in no condition to float on such a turbulent sea. Looking into the matter, I believed that the printing business was basically sound enough, but that the publishing firm could not be sustained. Yet I could not permit it to go bankrupt, for that would have revealed my connection to the world, and I should all too probably have been compelled to part with my share of the copyrights to my own works.
There was nothing for it but to make my peace with Constable and seek his help. This was granted, but on his own terms. He took over some of the stock and bought a quarter share in the copyright to my poem Rokeby, which together reduced liabilities by some £2,000. Then he conducted a careful examination of the two businesses and concluded that they might just be solvent, since assets and liabilities were almost equal to each other. The difficulty was that certain of the assets could not be realized, and, he judged, some £4,000 was urgently required. With great kindness and generosity, the Duke of Buccleuch offered to guarantee a bank overdraft to that figure, and the crisis was averted. It had been, as the Duke of Wellington was to say of Waterloo two years later, ‘a damn’d close-run thing’; but we had come thr
ough, and with trading conditions improving, there was no need to draw in my horns.
Retrenchment soon appeared unnecessary because of the great and unforeseen success of Waverley and the novels which followed. There was, it is true, a hiccup some three years later, but it seemed to me of little account. James had fallen in love and proposed to a certain Miss Hogarth, whose brother, as head of the family, was prudently reluctant to sanction marriage to a man whose financial situation appeared to him to be unsound. Accordingly, James for the time being retired from the partnership and became the salaried manager of the printing works, while I took over sole proprietorship of that business. The publishing firm ceased business the following year, when its debt – amounting if I remember to some £10,000 – was transferred to James Ballantyne & Co, as the printing firm continued to be named.
Meanwhile the success of the novels meant that I found no difficulty in raising money for my building operations at Abbotsford, and for the purchase of some of the small farms and holdings around, by means of which I was able to enlarge the estate to more than a thousand acres. Indeed, in a few years, with the purchase of the land around Cauldshiels Loch and the estate of Tofthills, renamed Huntly Burn, my land extended from Abbotsford to Darnick, and I was the proud proprietor of all the territory named in the ballad of Thomas the Rhymer.
I was aware, of course, that my foundation of credit was insecure, for we had formed the habit of drawing bills on Constable, in anticipation of literary profits, which we backed by granting him bills drawn on the printing business. In justice to myself, I should say that Constable, though an entrepreneur of near-genius, was no more timid or prudent in his business methods than I was myself, and no more reluctant to take credit wherever he found it available. Meanwhile I told myself that it was but reasonable that I should run into a certain degree of debt while I was engaged in establishing my estate; that it was no great matter if my expenditure in one year considerably exceeded my income, since I was not only certain of being able to redeem any short-coming from future literary earnings, and was in any case acquiring capital in the form of land – to say nothing of the copyrights, or the share in them which I retained. It was true that I was always in arrears, but then I was accustomed to live in such fashion, and assured myself that, if need be, I could aye get my feet clear by a modest economy and a considerable expenditure of creative effort.
A few years later – in 1821, I think – I was happy to be able to readmit James as a partner in the printing business, which had been making reasonable profits over the last few years thanks to its monopoly of printing my own novels. There was still a substantial floating debt – indeed I believe it was larger than it had ever been – somewhere between £20,000 and £30,000. This had come about partly because of the renewal of old bills, and the interest due on them, and partly, I confess, because I had been drawing fairly freely against the security of the firm in order to finance my building at Abbotsford and the extension of the estate. But I reflected that I was making at least £10,000 a year from my novels and had earned £80,000 by my pen in the last ten years, and I knew that when Abbotsford was completed, and in a fit state to be settled on my son (as it was on the occasion of his marriage), my expenditure would fall to a decent level, and there was no reason to suppose that it would not then be far exceeded by my annual literary earnings.
Yet on the re-constitution of our partnership, James and I agreed, with many a prudent nod and wink, that we would neither of us draw more than £500 a year from the business and that profit above that should go to the reduction of the firm’s debt.
What I did not realize, and for this I believe I should reprove myself, is that my financial position depended ultimately on the prosperity of Constable’s business, for so much paper had been exchanged between the two firms, that if Constable were to fail, then heigh-ho, down goes Ballantyne, and Sir Walter with it.
But Constable and his new partner, young Cadell, were flying high. He seemed to me not only the Napoleon, but also the Maecenas, of the book-trade. He paid me, I recollect, £1,000 for my poem Halidon Hill, which was the work of two wet mornings when the weather confined me to the house. His letters from London, where he often found himself – since naturally the main market was there – breathed confidence, optimism and high spirits. He was a man to whom any difficulty seemed an opportunity rather than a deterrent. Meanwhile, recovered from my three years of illness, I felt my own power as great as ever. The future was set fair.
We passed the next few years on easy seas, with only the occasional tremor. Constable’s confidence was infectious, even if in 1823 he had requested that the Ballantyne firm’s debt to him, which he declared to stand at £20,000, should be reduced by more than half. But, by 1825 Abbotsford had been completed, and young Walter was married and set up for life. My expenses were, as I had anticipated, diminishing, and my mind was serene.
Constable visited us at Abbotsford that spring. He was in a state of high enthusiasm which might be better termed excitement. The business of printing and book-selling, he told James and me, was only in its infancy – I indicated a decanter of whisky and suggested we take a drappie to wet the baby’s heid. He proposed, he said, to bring out a new Miscellany, in cloth rather than boards, to be sold at a cheap price in monthly numbers, costing perhaps half-a-crown.
‘If I live another half-dozen years,’ said he, firing up, ‘I’ll make it as impossible that there should not be a good library in every decent house in Britain as that the shepherd’s ingle-neuk should want the saut-poke! Aye, and what’s mair? Why should the ingleneuk itself want a shelf for the novels?’
‘As I have said, Constable,’ I replied, ‘you are the grand Napoleon of the realms of Print.’
‘I’ll bespeak that line for my tombstone, Sir Walter. But stay – Napoleon. What would you say to a life of Napoleon by the Author of Waverley?’
‘Done,’ said I, before we had even discussed the terms on which the thing should indeed be done; and I set to work almost straightaway on the research, the sort of book-learning in which I have aye taken pleasure, sending to Paris for among other things a hundred volumes of the Moniteur, Nap’s official gazette.
I spent that summer and autumn digging at Napoleon and toyed with a new novel which was to be Woodstock. In November came evil tidings from London, for the Stock Exchange had suffered one of those periodic outbreaks of speculation that seem as inescapable as the plague used to be. By the autumn the peak was past, and the consequences beginning to be felt. The bankers, aware of their earlier rashness, were now restricting credit, and calling in debts as a shepherd folds his sheep.
Lockhart, who had been in London, in connection with his prospective editorship of the Quarterly, wrote to me concerning rumours that Constable’s London agents, Hurst and Robinson, were in Queer Street; it was said they had lost £100,000 in a speculation involving hops. Knowing how deeply Constable was committed to them, the tale caused me some misgivings; but I comforted myself with the assurance that the Great Man would certainly let me know at the earliest opportunity if there was any substantial cause for concern. Then Lockhart returned north, and in a few days received a letter from a London lawyer declaring that Constable’s London bankers had closed his account.
I could not believe it; but I could not sleep either, and so ordered my carriage to be harnessed and drove through the night to Constable’s estate at Polton. He was suffering from gout, but was quick to assure me that the rumour was false. Nevertheless he admitted that there were difficulties, but ‘none that cannot be surmounted, Sir Walter’, though he added that it might be necessary to raise some money to support his London agents, ‘for I do not conceal from you that their ruin would involve me, and therefore you, through the Ballantyne business and in other respects also, in considerable embarrassment.’ We agreed to raise £5,000 for this purpose.
Things got worse in London, and in mid-December a great private bank closed its doors, the first of several, I believe. On the 14th, at Constabl
e’s instigation, I committed myself to raising a £10,000 mortgage on Abbotsford – as I was entitled to do under the terms of Walter’s marriage settlement – and to make the money available to Constable that he might shore up Hurst and Robinson, for I now realized that he stood in much the same relation to them as Ballantyne’s did to him.
On the 18th came word that Hurst and Robinson were down. I felt as if a strong cold hand had seized me by the throat. But that night Cadell arrived to tell me this rumour too was false. The house still stood, and that evening in a fit of verse-making I scribbled lines to the old tune, ‘Bonnie Dundee’.
Christmas was a cheerless time, and I forced myself to my desk to obliterate the cold sinkings of the heart which threatened to unman me. The mortgage was executed and the money went to Constable.
In mid-January, the 16th, I returned to Edinburgh in bitter weather and a black frost. ‘Came through cold roads to as cold news,’ I noted in my journal, for I learned that Hurst and Robinson had dishonoured a bill of Constable’s, and the world had cracked. Since Hurst and Robinson could not meet their liabilities, their creditors turned on Constable who had backed their bills; his turned on Ballantyne’s; and so good-night.
It was hard to establish who owed what to whom, so intricate had been the relations between the three firms; but the upshot was that Hurst and Robinson were in debt for £300,000, Constable for £256,000, and Ballantyne’s, which meant Sir Walter, for £130,000. Most of our debt was held by the banks, though a few bills were now in the possession of private traders and speculators.