Ragged Lion

by Allan Massie

  Nor were all his Ministers in favour of a visit to Scotland. Poor Lord Londonderry, whose mind was already disturbed, and who would bring his own life so cruelly to an end, even as His Majesty set sail in the Royal George, the visit having at last been determined on, gave him conflicting advice – now one thing one day, and the opposite the day after – an inconsistency that all too faithfully reflected the vagaries of his own poor agitated intelligence. In short, one week the king would come, and the next he would not.

  I had persuaded myself that he would not come this year, and was looking forward to some easy weeks at Abbotsford, and then to a trip into the Highlands as the guest of Glengarry, when the Lord Provost of Edinburgh, Mr William Arbuthnott, called on me in Castle Street one morning and informed me that the visit would certainly take place. Furthermore, he said, there was not long to make all the arrangements, he did not know where to begin, and relied on me utterly to determine what form the matter should take.

  The Lord Provost was, he said, acutely conscious that there was no traditional way of welcoming a monarch to his northern capital which could be taken as a model for the projected visit. This was of course true, and I did not think it right to disturb him further by mentioning what was uppermost in my mind: the weeks that the Prince had spent in Holyroodhouse in the autumn of 1745, though I was certain that His Majesty would be mindful of that time himself. Therefore I merely promised that I would think on the matter, and the next day discussed it with my old friend William Adam, the Lord Commissioner of the Scottish Jury Court. He reminded me of the Commission of Inquiry set up to discover the Honours of Scotland, and proposed that a similar body be formed now. This made good sense and we quickly co-opted David Stewart of Garth, as the principal authority on the history, culture, customs, arms and dress of the Highlanders, my old friend James Skene of Rubislaw and my distant cousin Sir Alexander Keith of Ravelston, whose membership of the Committee was the most appropriate since he was now the Scottish head of the great family that had supplied the hereditary Earls Marischal of Scotland, and which had suffered grievously for its loyalty to the Stuarts.

  When we met, I mentioned that in a private conversation with His Majesty some years previously, I had remarked to him that, the Old Cause now being dead, there could be no doubt that he himself was the true heir of the old traditional Scottish kings as the direct descendant of Mary of Scotland and her son James VI & I, and that he had been much struck by the notion. Accordingly I had no doubt that he would play the true part of a King of Scots with all the grace and dignity of which I knew him to be capable on any public occasion. I added that his enthusiasm had been such that I was sure he would fit himself out in a manner becoming a King of Scots.

  ‘Do you mean that you think he will wear the kilt?’ asked Stewart.

  ‘I am certain of it.’

  The motto of the visit, I suggested, should be Righ Albainn gu brath, that is Long Life to the King of Scotland, for it was only by elevating the status of Scotland and by reaffirming our national dignity that the Union of the two kingdoms could be made complete.

  Since I was aware that the public ceremonies would have something of the aspect of a pageant, I did not scruple to turn to my theatrical friends for advice. The first was Daniel Terry, whom I also requested to return to me as quickly as possible one of my dearest possessions, the sword which had belonged to the great Marquis of Montrose, which Terry had taken to London to restore and provide with a suitable scabbard, and which I had promised to Sir Alexander Keith for this great occasion. In Edinburgh, I relied on the imaginative skill of Mr William Murray, the manager of Edinburgh’s Theatre Royal at the East End of Princes Street. I was especially pleased to do so, because Mr Murray was the grandson of Murray of Broughton of whom I had that dark childhood memory which I have already related; and I believed that by employing him in this manner, I would not only do something to enable him to retrieve the family honour which his grandfather had so besmirched, but that it would also signify the binding of the wounds of Scotland’s bleeding history, and so effect the reconciliation of the different strains in the land which I saw as the happiest consequence of the visit.

  I decided early on four major events which would express the nation’s sense of itself. At the centre of them all would be the King, as the heir of Robert the Bruce and all the Stuarts, even down to the unhappy Prince Charles Edward himself. First, the Honours of Scotland should be conveyed with due ceremony from the Castle to Holyroodhouse, to await the King. Second, the royal landing at Leith, where Queen Mary had set foot on Scottish soil after her long years in France, should be followed by a ceremonial procession to Holyroodhouse, with all the pomp, and dignity, that could be mustered. Third, at some appropriate moment during the visit, the King himself should return the Honours to the Castle, where he would show himself to the crowd from the battlements. Fourth, there should be a great gathering of the Clans under their loyal chiefs, which should demonstrate to all that Gaelic Scotland also acquiesced in the restored monarchy. I kept these points central, and all else was subsidiary to them.

  Our plans were soon interrupted by an impertinent letter from a certain Mr Thomas Nash, who held the post of Controller of Accounts in the Lord Chamberlain’s Office. No doubt with the best intentions, but with a sad lack of understanding, Mr Nash challenged the authority of the Committee. He reminded us of what had been done when the King had visited Ireland the previous year, and suggested that this should be regarded as the model or precedent for what was to be done in Edinburgh. I answered him roundly. Ireland, I said, was not a historic kingdom, but a lordship of the English Crown. I therefore wished to hear no more about that country, or indeed about England or English practices either. ‘When His Majesty comes amongst us,’ I wrote, ‘he comes to his ancient kingdom of Scotland, and must be received according to ancient usages. If you persist in bringing in English customs, we turn about, one and all, and leave you. You take the responsibility for the success or failure of the visit entirely upon yourself; and this was sufficient, for he shrank, prudently, from such an onerous responsibility.

  I knew better than anyone, of course, that many ancient usages had been quite forgotten, and that it would be necessary to employ a degree of imagination to devise acceptable substitutes. One of my happiest strokes, I believe, was to make suitable use of the Royal Company of Archers, and to present them as the ancient bodyguard of the Scottish kings. I knew they were no such thing, that the Company had been formed in the late seventeenth century, long after there was no monarch resident in Scotland, that, though it had been granted a Royal Charter by Queen Anne, it was essentially a sporting and social club; it had come close to being disbanded on account of the Jacobite sympathies many of its members had displayed at the time of the ’15; but it was clear that the King must have a bodyguard, and there was no company better fitted to supply him with one. Furthermore, I was at this time brooding on the idea for a novel which the next year came to fruition as Quentin Durward; and it seemed to me that if the Kings of France were defended by a Guard of Scottish Archers, the Kings of Scotland should be equipped in no inferior manner. Accordingly, with the help of Mr Murray, a suitable uniform was devised, and the Archers were fitted out in suits of Lincoln Green slashed with white satin, a flat bonnet sporting eagle’s feathers, a hunting-knife at the belt, a long bow, and a quiver of clothyard arrows. They made a brave show, and were so pleased with the garb that I believe they immediately afterwards took an oath to retain it for ever.

  It is not my intention here to give a full account of this remarkable visit, for the details can be found easily elsewhere, and, of course, it was daily recorded in the Press, in general fairly, though the recently established Edinburgh newspaper, The Scotsman, consistently displayed a querulous, canting, levelling, Whiggish spirit, though even it could not ultimately deny the extraordinary success of the venture, far beyond what even the most optimistic of its promoters had hoped for.

  For my part, I was exhausted almost befor
e it was underway. I was afflicted, too, by a rash, the product, my doctor advised, of nervous irritation, which lowered my vitality and rendered it unseemly for me to wear the kilt. (I was amused, by the by, to get a letter from young Walter, currently in Berlin, who told me how the ladies had been shocked when he declared his intention of appearing at a ball in the garb of old Gaul, and had urged him at least to cover his thighs with ‘those flesh-coloured things that are worn upon the stage’. With a fine show of spirit the boy appealed to the King of Prussia who told him that the women were a parcel of silly bitches and that he should wear his kilt as he pleased.)

  I had occasion, too, for private sorrow which marred the King’s arrival, for on the very day when the Royal George dropped anchor off Leith, my dear friend Will Erskine, only lately raised to the bench as Lord Kinedder, breathed his last. Already grieving for the recent death of his wife, his end was hastened, I believe, by a vile calumny put about: to wit, that he was the lover of an apothecary’s wife. A man of a firmer temperament might have laughed off such nonsense, but Erskine, over-sensitive and fine-spirited, was dismayed and felt himself to be degraded. His health rapidly failed him, and his noble life ebbed away. He was buried at Queensferry by the estate in which he took such pleasure, and I believe I have rarely felt more wretched than when I stood in that grey kirkyard in the thin rain coming off the Forth. I would fain have skirted Edinburgh and made for the refuge, nay the sanctuary, of Abhotsford, but instead I had to bestir myself and make merry.

  During the visit, the King’s graciousness conquered all with whom he came in contact, and delighted the people who thronged the streets whenever he made a public appearance. There were also pleasant intimate dinners for those whom he chose to invite to attend him more closely. He lodged, of course, in the Buccleuch Palace of Dalkeith, since Holyroodhouse was not considered to be in fit state to receive him, though some £4,000 – I believe – was spent on refurbishing those apartments which were to be used for the Levees and Receptions which His Majesty gave there – I daresay I should have been more impressed by this figure had I not been well acquaint with the bills from masons, joiners, plasterers and decorators at Abbotsford. But I recall with especial pleasure a dinner there when the young Duke Walter, then a boy of fifteen, I think, sat on his right hand, and His Majesty showed his delight in the Scots fiddle music played by the famous Nathaniel Gow and his musicians. He would send the young Duke from the table to request particular pieces from the players – in the choice of which he impressed all by his knowledge and taste. When the young Duke grew somewhat weary of his role as messenger, His Majesty clapped him affectionately on the shoulder, and said, ‘As the youngest member of the company, my dear, you must make yourself useful. When you reach my age, or that of your kinsman Sir Walter, then you may in your turn exercise authority over the young’; and he pressed a glass of champagne on him, waving away some proffered brandy with the words ‘far too strong for one of His Grace’s tender years to drink’.

  I believe His Majesty can rarely have been happier than on the day when he carried the Honours of Scotland from Holyroodhouse back up to their historic lodging in the Castle. The enthusiasm of the crowd – so unlike the hostility to which he was accustomed in London – exhilarated him. The day was wet and misty, but, despite his bodily infirmities, he made his way to the Castle battlements where he stood, waving his bonnet, and acknowledging the cheers of the crowd for a full quarter of an hour. When he emerged on to the battlements he turned to Sir Alexander Keith and said ‘Good God! What a fine sight! I had no conception there was such a scene in the world; and to find it in my own dominions; and the people are as extraordinary and beautiful as the scene.’ They urged him to come in out of the rain. ‘Rain?’ said he, speaking as if the soul of his ancestors did indeed at that moment inhabit his body. ‘Rain? I feel no rain. Never mind the weather. I must cheer my people.’

  There is one other memory, tranquil, moving, and melancholy, that rises above my souvenirs of the gaiety and exuberance of the festivities. Before he took his leave of us, he went alone to Queen Mary’s apartments in Holyroodhouse. Before he left London he had insisted that these apartments should not be touched in the course of whatever repairs and re-decoration were made. He arrived without ceremony, dressed like a country gentleman coming to town, and spent almost an hour there, sometimes – I was told – standing without moving for five minutes at a time, while he imbibed the atmosphere of the Queen’s chamber, whence the unfortunate Rizzio had been dragged to his brutal murder, crying out to the Queen who was powerless to help him, and whom the ferocious and drunken earls threatened to ‘cut into collops’ herself, if she attempted any resistance. Then His Majesty would run his hand over the bed in which his ancestress had slept, and let it rest on the bed-post to which Rizzio had clung. He spoke little, but he felt much. ‘Rarely,’ he said to me later, ‘no never, Walter, have I felt the past surge so powerfully against me, or been so keenly conscious of the influence of my heredity and my Stuart blood.’

  When the captains and the King had departed, and I was able to return to Abbotsford and rest, criticism muted during the three weeks of the visit was naturally more loudly heard. I was reproached for what some called the ‘Celtification’ of Scotland. It was argued that I had imposed a false image of my native land. Lowlanders, who had feared and loathed the Highland clans for generations, it was said, had been encouraged by me to accept them as the personification of Scotland. There were many who were not slow to point out that during the ’15 and even more during the ’45 Lowland Scotland – and especially the cities of Edinburgh and Glasgow – had been loyal to King George and had repudiated those whom they called the Pretenders.

  I knew this as well as anybody, better indeed than most. But I also knew that, just as I had myself Whig and Jacobite strains in my own family and my own heredity, in this I seemed to myself the very image of Scotland. For centuries we had been a nation riven by deep divisions, and yet capable at vital moments of coming together as one. We were almost the first people in Europe to acquire a strong sense of national feeling, and I was aware of how this had been diluted, and of how many among us were prepared to settle, even if at times resentfully, for the status of North Britons. Well, I was proud to be British, but could never consent to style myself a North Briton. I believed that to be oblivious of our history was to mortgage our future.

  Now whatever distinction there might be between the North of England and the Lowlands of Scotland, it was, except in terms of our national history, a fine one. To restore a full sense of national consciousness in Scotland it was necessary that Highlands and Lowlands should come together, and that the old animosities should be stilled. Then inasmuch as nothing marked Scots out as distinct so clearly as the Highland tradition, it was evident that the most efficacious way of forming a renewed sense of national identity was to make use of that, and to persuade all Scots that we shared in those traditions, which indeed in a sense we did, for in the early Middle Ages, before Malcolm Canmore married the Saxon princess Margaret, Gaelic was the tongue spoken over almost the whole of Scotland.

  I trust I do not claim too much if I say that in managing the King’s visit I was attempting to give visible expression to the impulse which drove me to write Waverley, Rob Roy and Redgauntlet.

  I may add two footnotes. During the visit I spoke to Sir Robert Peel, the Home Secretary, and a man I already knew and highly esteemed – as did Byron who had been his schoolfellow at Harrow – about the great cannon Mons Meg which had been removed from Edinburgh Castle after the ’45, and which now languished in the Tower of London. I suggested the time was ripe for its return, and Sir Robert, with his quick sympathetic understanding, undertook to arrange it.

  I also took the liberty of suggesting to His Majesty that the act of reconciliation between the Houses of Hanover and Stuart, which he embodied in his own person, would be made complete if he would now lift the attainder which still afflicted Jacobite families, and, if it was alas impossible to
restore forfeited estates, since this could not be done without injustice to their present proprietors who had purchased them in good faith, it would at least be possible, and seemly, to restore the titles of which those loyal to the Stuarts had been deprived. His Majesty responded to the suggestion with that quick and tactful enthusiasm which he had displayed, to the delight of all, throughout his time in his northern capital; and the thing was done.

  There is only one regret: that the King’s indifferent health made it impossible to repeat his visit to Scotland and perhaps travel more widely throughout the country where I have no doubt that he would everywhere have been greeted with the same loyal acclamations that so delighted him in Edinburgh. Certainly, when the royal yacht slipped down the Forth, there were many hearts which spoke the refrain: ‘Will ye no come back again?’

  16

  Of Death and Dreams, 1829

  I had thought to have done with this ragged memoir, for it is long since I wrote in it, having, in some fashion, employed it to write me into a better frame of mind, so that my legitimate work proceeded apace, and to my fair satisfaction. Besides which, that served what I fear is now its primary purpose well enough, and has considerably reduced my debt to my publishers. There have been moments when I feared that I was attempting more than my health could bear. Well, if so, ‘at least we’ll die with harness on our back’.

  Constable died more than a year back. I had no cause to regret him, and yet I did, our connection having been so close, and we having shared triumphs and disasters. If he wronged me in the end, it may be that I wronged him in my turn; and that, bound together, we were agents of our mutual destruction. It is strange; no man understood better the art of publishing and selling books than Constable, and, without an affectation of modesty, I can say that no man in our time has better understood the art of making them than myself – and yet. Well, you have to climb high to suffer a great fall. There was something of the tragic hero in him, for he was felled as much by his own character as by circumstance. His pride and vanity were inordinate, and, till near the very last moment, he could not believe that he could be broken. For my part, I had had doubts, fears which I kept secret that the thing was too good to last. I was in one way more fortunate than he; for when the crash came, I had my mental and imaginative resources to fall back on; I could aye work, which is the only medicine I know for heartache, but he, cast down in his pomp of pride, bankrupt, was as enfeebled as Napoleon on St Helena.