Ragged Lion

by Allan Massie

  It was a bitter moment when I had to confess to Lady Scott and Miss Anne that I was a ruined man; and I cannot blame poor Charlotte that her charity failed her. She was already declining in health and now chided me for putting an unthinking trust in others.

  Well, it is the trust others have put in me which has caused me most distress. There is a Spanish proverb: ‘Who wishes not to sleep late in the morning, let him borrow the pillow of a debtor.’

  I early resolved two things: first, that I should refuse all the offers of help which came flooding in on me. Among them there was one which touched me deeply: old Mr Pole, who taught Sophia and Anne to play the harp, offered me some £500, probably all he had in the world, saying that since he had got it as a result of my patronage, it was mine to make what use I cared of. I had the resolution to decline, but not to keep the tears from starting to my eyes. Walter’s Jane offered to sell her holdings in the funds, and Sir William Forbes, a banker himself and the man who supplanted me in Williamina’s affections – but a good and loyal friend all my life for all that – expressly proffered whatever aid he could give. A newspaper even proposed that a subscription should be raised for my benefit – a fine thing that would have been – here is a popular author whom the public has already supplied with countless thousands of pounds, now seeking their charity because he had not the wit to keep a gude haud o’ his siller. No, these suggestions and offers did credit to the generous hearts of those who made them, but I would have none of it. To enter into fresh debt owed to my friends, in order to clear myself of debts which were the result of my own folly, that must be repugnant to any man of honour.

  And so, since honour and industry were all that were left to me, I would have no man’s help.

  I resolved that I would not, if it could be avoided, take the easy refuge of bankruptcy, but to accept the government of trustees and clear the debt in full. ‘My own right hand shall do it,’ I said. Like King James at Flodden I ‘saw the wreck my rashness wrought’, and determined to drive myself even to death to repair the matter.

  As for Constable, I pity him, and yet cannot acquit him of blame, or for his luring me into taking that mortgage on Abbotsford, raising a sum of money which the estate can ill afford and which was then drowned in his shipwreck. My feelings towards his Czarish Majesty were mixed, for as I said to Skene, ‘he aye paid well and promptly, even generously, but, devil take him, it was all spectral money. He sowed my field with one hand and as liberally sowed tares with the other.’

  Yet now that my first anger and resentment have abated, let me pay tribute to him. While I live I shall regret the downfall of his house, for there never was a publisher who did better by his authors. No doubt: he went too far while money was plentiful, but if you reflect how so many booksellers grudge every penny the mere author extracts from their grasping hand, well, Constable shines out in the full glory of the midsummer sun.

  When I first visited my dear Abbotsford after the disaster, and after I had taken my resolution of how to combat it, dear Willie Laidlaw asked me how I was.

  ‘I feel like the Eildon Hills, Willie – quite firm, but a little cloudy.’

  ‘And what for no?’ he replied.

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I maun harness myself to my yoke. I can count myself fortunate that I have seen all that society and the world have to offer, and I find myself in agreement with the preacher that all is vanity, and much, vexation of spirit.’

  ‘Aye, aye,’ says Willie, ‘and you speak a true word there.’

  15

  Scotland, England and the Royal Visit of 1822

  It so happened that the period of greatest uncertainty and wretchedness concerning my own financial affairs coincided with one of my rare entries into the public controversies of our own day. In general I care little for politics from one year’s end to another. I would not go so far as Dr Johnson who observed that he ‘would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government rather than another. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual’ – and indeed I believe that the good Doctor might have changed his opinion had he lived to see the horrors of the Revolution in France. Nevertheless, most of the time I have been content to let things take their course without my interference, and certainly in this country changes of government have made little difference to the happiness of individuals – though it may be another matter if the present agitation for Reform is permitted to shake the fabric of the State.

  Yet when something happens to stir me, then I will strike with the best and the fiercest; and I have often thought it has been my good fortune to have lived in quiet times, for in a more turbulent age I doubt if I should have ’scaped hanging.

  Now the financial crisis, that pulled this ragged lion down, alarmed the Government, which, eager to seek a remedy for the disease, and too impatient to examine the cause, resolved on a measure which would have limited the Bank of England to the issue of notes of a value of £5 and upwards, and have taken the privilege of issuing bank-notes from the private banks altogether; and it was proposed that this measure should apply to Scotland also.

  I at once saw that it would be in every way harmful, for the shortage of coin in Scotland was such that the passing and acceptance of bank-notes had become the ordinary and common mode of doing business; and the withdrawal from the Scottish banks of the right to issue their own notes would have had the dire effect of bringing the trade and manufactory of the country to a standstill. I therefore resolved to strike, and did so with some vigour, in three letters published in successive issues of James Ballantyne’s Weekly Journal, and attributed to one Malachi Malagrowther, the letters subsequently being published by Blackwood in pamphlet form.

  The letters made a considerable stir. My authorship was recognized, and by stirring up a hornet’s nest – for I am glad to say that there was much in the matter of my epistles which the Whigs also detested – I showed that I was still to be reckoned with. I was not to be an object of Pity – ‘poor Sir Walter that has had sae sair a fall’.

  My intervention infuriated some of my friends in the ministry who felt, no doubt, as if a dog which they had supposed faithful had turned and nipped their ankles. Well, I had never hired myself to any man or party, and was not going to begin to do so in the twilight of my life. What’s mair, as Tom Purdie would have said, what’s mair, hinny, it amused me that I should be turning patriot and giving direction as to the management of the financial affairs of the kingdom, on the very day I signed the Deed of Trust on behalf of my creditors, and was thus proclaiming myself incapable of managing my own. Aye, it was rare work for a near-bankrupt scribbler.

  I carried the argument far beyond the point narrowly at issue, and surveyed the course of Scottish affairs since the Union, and the manner in which they had been conducted. Indeed, I rested a major part of my argument on the Treaty of Union itself, and in particular on that article which guarantees that no alteration be made to laws which concern private rights ‘excepting for the evident utility of the Subjects within Scotland’. No evidence of such utility had been offered; and therefore the proposed measure clearly contravened the Treaty, and ought to be abandoned.

  That Union itself was a shabby business. I have no doubt of that, or that, if I had been living then, I would have struggled against its making with all the force and eloquence that I could muster. There is a part of me that has never been reconciled to it, that sighs for the auld independent kingdom, when we made our ain laws, and went our ain way, whatever the consequences. And it grieves me when I see folk tinkering with the inherited institutions that yet survive. If Jeffrey, Cockburn and their Whig friends are given their head they will whittle away whatever is distinctively Scotch until we become mere Northern Englishmen, awkward, crotchety, and girny, it may be, but without the individuality that even now distinguishes us.

  There were certain areas, I am aware, even in the sacred field of Scots Law, where the Treaty of Union effected marked improvement much to be desired. Before the Union, the questi
on whether a right of appeal to the Scots Parliament from the decrees of the Court of Session existed had been hotly disputed. In 1674, for example, a number of members of the Faculty of Advocates were suspended by the Court for daring to presume the right of such appeal; and at a time when the judges were more distinguished for legal knowledge than for either impartiality or integrity, the denial of the right to appeal to a Higher Court made acts of partisan injustice more probable, and indeed more common. The Treaty, however, by securing the right of appeal to the House of Lords, ended that state of things and so contributed to the impartial and independent character which, much contrary to the practice of their predecessors, the Judges of the Court of Session have since displayed. But, of course, an act of the Scots Parliament itself could have served as well.

  The subsequent success of the Union, which I do not deny, had depended on the willingness of the Government in London to permit Scotland, under the guardianship of our own institutions, to win her silent way to wealth and consequence. The growth and magnificence of the great city of Glasgow affords evidence of the value and utility of Union. ‘Nane’, as I had my own dear Bailie Nicol Jarvie say, ‘were keener against it than the Glasgow folk, wi’ their rabblings and their risings, and their mobs, as they ca’ them nowadays. But it’s an ill wind that blaws naebody gude – Let ilka ane roose the ford as they find it – I say, Let Glasgow flourish! which is judiciously and elegantly putten round the town’s arms, by way of Byword – Now, since St Mungo catched herrings in the Clyde, what was ever like to gar us flourish like the sugar and tobacco trade? Will onybody tell me that, and grumble at the Treaty that opened us a way west-awa-yonder?’

  The Bailie is unanswerable. Common sense and reason are his supports. And there is another matter which should not be forgotten and which has reconciled countless Scots to the Union. Even if the old parchment of the Treaty should become obsolete, the peace that now exists between the two proud neighbouring nations, often so cruelly at war with one another, cries down blessings on the Union that has enabled the Borderers ‘to hang their broadswords on the wall and study war no more’. I am as fixed in my love for Scotland as any man, and as good a patriot – fier comme un Écossais – but I had rather Scotland should dwindle into becoming a mere Northumberland than that we should remedy the loss of our national consequence by even threatening a rupture which should break that bonnie peace. Yet there is no harm in wishing that we may have or retain just sufficient of a sour temper, just so much national spirit, and just so much resolution, as will enable us to stand up for our rights, and our institutions, conducting our defiance of any encroachment on them with every feeling of respect and amity towards our sister nation, my dear England.

  And I believe that the late war with France – brutal and cruel necessity – has done much to inculcate a sense of British patriotism, in the cultivation of which Scotsmen have not been remiss. For was it not a Scot – James Thomson from Ednam, near Kelso – who gave us that fine song ‘Rule, Britannia!’, and were not some of the finest patriotic verses made in the French Wars the work of another, my friend Thomas Campbell?

  Yet I would resist any levelling process. I deplore anything which would sink us in uniformity. Indeed I am certain that it is to the advantage of the Union and the Kingdom – aye and to the advantage of England too – that the culture of its constituent nations should remain proudly distinct. I have been lionized in London as much as any man – and more, probably, than is altogether good for any man. I accepted this, not only as a species of tribute to anything worthwhile which I may have achieved – but if it had been that alone, I trust I would soon have wearied of it – but also, and more importantly, as a recognition of the distinct character of my native land. The Union will be the weaker if Scotland grows less Scotch, just as it would be if, by some at present unforeseeable turn of events, England became less English. I would add, however, that its preservation will depend on the tact and fine sensibility displayed by our southern neighbours, who are so greatly favoured by nature, and who must therefore always be the richer and preponderant partner. If, however, the day should come when they forget that the Union is a partnership, then either we must sink into resentful subjection or cut ourselves loose, with all the attendant risks. But if that day comes, let the break be made in an amicable and generous spirit on both sides.

  It was with such thoughts in mind that I responded with alacrity to the suggestion a few years ago that His Majesty should pay a visit to his northern kingdom. No reigning monarch had set foot in Scotland since Charles II, having been crowned at Scone, set forth on that bold campaign that ended so disastrously at Worcester – unless, of course, as a loyal Jacobite, you insist that James VIII was truly king when he made his belated and feeble contribution to the ’15 Rising.

  I knew already that His Majesty was sensitive to Scottish sentiment. He had responded with enthusiasm to a suggestion I put to him while he was still Regent that the ancient Regalia of Scotland should be disinterred from the lumber of the Crown Room in Edinburgh Castle where they had so long lain unregarded, and I was proud to be named as one of the Commissioners of Inquiry charged with undertaking the task. Many believed that the Regalia had in fact been taken south at the time of the Union, or shortly afterwards, though the Treaty stipulated that they should never leave Scottish soil. On the 4th of February 1818, a dusty iron chest was prised open by a sergeant of the Castle Guard, and there, in perfect order, as if they had been sleeping under enchantment in a fairy tale, were the Crown and Sceptre fashioned in the reign of James V, and the noble and magnificent Sword of State which Pope Julius II had sent to James IV, and the great silver mace once ceremonially borne by the Lord Treasurer of Scotland. It was a moment of deep emotion such as I cannot render into words; and Sophia, who had accompanied me to the ceremony, was close to fainting. Not all my fellow Commissioners felt the sacramental gravity of the moment; one – who for the honour of his family I shall not name – displayed an improper levity and went so far as to propose placing the Crown on the head of one of the young ladies present, remarking that it would become her rarely. He was about to lay hands on the mark of royalty, but I stopped him with a sharp cry: ‘My God, No’; and, to give him his due, he displayed contrition, confusion, and was uncharacteristically silent thereafter.

  His Majesty had already given another sign of his profound understanding of our national sentiment, for he had commissioned the famous sculptor Canova to raise a magnificent monument to the exiled and unfortunate Stuart kings in St Peter’s in Rome; and though I have not seen it I believe that the inscription bears not only their names but their royal titles, and records that it was raised by the order of the Prince Regent. In this connection, I might mention also the humanity of his father, the late King George III, who granted a pension to the last scion of the doleful House of Stuart, Henry, Cardinal-Duke of York, by that time the titular Henry I & IX, when his bishopric and benefices were torn from him by the ruffianly French, and he was thrust into poverty in his old age.

  There was an immediate political reason which rendered a royal visit to Scotland desirable, for the economic distresses which were in part the consequence of the slackening of trade brought about by the ending of the war, and in part the result of the profound changes then taking place in methods of manufactory, which were aggravated by the callous denial of responsibility for the welfare of their workers displayed by a number of employers, had re-kindled a dangerously Radical mood in the country-side and towns, which I indeed attempted to combat by putting our volunteer force, the Buccleuch Foresters, on the alert.

  My ambitions, however, transcended this narrow purpose. I saw that a successful royal visit might be the means of reconciling a greater number of my fellow-countrymen to the Union with England, and that it might also serve to heal the still bleeding wounds left by the memories of the suppression of the Jacobites, and to promote a better understanding between Highland and Lowland. In short, it appeared to me that to promote such a visit was to gi
ve practical expression to the arguments which I had deployed in my novels. Only one prince of the House of Hanover had ever visited Scotland, and his example had been unhappy, for he was the notorious Duke of Cumberland whose ruthless cruelty after Culloden had left his name stinking in Scotch nostrils, even though the University of St Andrews honoured him by inviting him to become its Chancellor, and though the Town Councils of Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen had all given dinners in his honour.

  The project was not without a degree of risk. His Majesty, though a man of intelligence and sensibility, had been unpopular during his Regency, and this unpopularity had been increased rather than diminished by his attempt to divorce his wife, Caroline of Brunswick. Though I am no friend to divorce, holding that a man should stick to the vows he made, however hard he might find it to do so, I had some sympathy for His Majesty, for my own single encounter with the Queen had not given me a favourable opinion of her: for on that occasion, in London in 1806 or 7, she had most indecorously attempted to flirt with me. I was not therefore surprised to hear of her subsequent gross immorality.

  The London mob, always sentimental and at the same time eager to express its democratic prejudices, took up the Queen’s cause vociferously; while her counsel, Henry Brougham, a man of great intellectual gifts that were equalled only by his moral infirmities, defended her with brilliant and unscrupulous art that would have been better displayed in a more worthy cause. The divorce was abandoned, and the Queen was the heroine of the London mob.

  His Majesty was wounded, sensitive to his unpopularity, and reluctant to display himself before his subjects. It required a certain tact to convey the assurance that in Edinburgh he would be received with all the respect due to his rank, and that his visit might, if properly handled, revive an enthusiasm for monarchy that had lain too long dormant.

  Still there was hesitation. His Majesty was in poor health, suffering from gout and the dropsy. Then Lady Conynghame, on whom he relied deeply for comfort, was urging him to make a tour of the Continent, where, she assured him, his presence would do much to restrain the dangerous drift towards Liberalism which was alienating so many nations from their legitimate monarchs, and where, furthermore, his health would benefit from the gentler climate.