Ragged Lion

by Allan Massie

  I should also say that the War Ministry with a kindness and tact, which I should wish to acknowledge, had granted my elder son Walter leave of absence from his regiment to accompany me on at least the first part of my journey; which was not only a source of great comfort to me, but of pleasure to poor Anne, who was not only thus relieved of responsibility for her ailing – and, I fear, too often crabbit – father, but delighted by the company of her favourite sibling.

  The disconnections of my memory are such that I find I have forgot also to record the great kindness of my old friend Mr Wordsworth, the poet, in coming to Abbotsford with his daughter from his home in Westmorland, in order to wish me godspeed on my travels. I was the more sensible of this kindness because Wordsworth was himself in but indifferent health, being in particular afflicted by a malady which rendered his eyes peculiarly sensitive to light, so that throughout his visit he protected or shielded them with a deep green shade – a curious and picturesque addition to his costume. Of our conversation I recall little, though I do remember remarking that it was a singular circumstance that both Fielding and Smollett – who may in a sense be regarded as my precursors – should have been driven abroad by declining health, and had never returned. Mr Wordsworth generously expressed his confidence that such would not be my fate; I wish I could have shared it. Yet, in Naples, whither we travelled after our sojourn at Malta, I began to be more hopeful that he might be right, for I seemed the reverse of his idiot boy:

  For as my body’s growing worse,

  My mind is growing better . . .

  The first view of Naples filled me with delight; there can be few scenes more tenderly and beautifully Romantic than its bay. It is one of the finest things I ever saw. Vesuvius controls it on the opposite side of the town. My younger son, Charles, who is attached to our legation here, greeted us, to my great joy – so that but for the absence of Sophia and Lockhart and, of course, young Mrs Walter, the whole family was united. Charles, with his customary levity, amused me by assuring me that my arrival had been a signal for the greatest eruption from Vesuvius for many years. I could only reply as the Frenchman did when told of a comet supposed to portend his own death: ‘Ah, Messieurs, la comète me fait trop d’honneur.’

  Our time at Naples passed for the most part pleasantly. We were fortunate to find in the distinguished antiquary Sir William Gell an ideal cicerone – to employ the Italian term – who put himself at our service with the greatest kindness, arranging several expeditions for us, and ensuring by his profound knowledge and acute taste that we derived the greatest possible pleasure and instruction from them. Yet I confess that owing to my lack of Italian – though I could once read the language weel enough – I got as much pleasure from my conversation with Sir William’s dog – a fine specimen of the large poodle type – as from my intercourse with even the most distinguished Neapolitans. ‘Good boy,’ I would say to him, ‘I have got at home two favourite dogs of my own – so fine, large and handsome that I fear they look too grand and feudal for my diminished income and invalid state.’ At this, the dog laid his head confidingly on my knee as if to intimate that he would do all in his power to compensate for their absence. It was therefore a great pleasure to be able to inform him – and Sir William – that I had received news from Cadell that poor Count Robert and sad Castle Dangerous had gone into a second edition, so that I was now certain that my debts could finally be cleared and I would be able to sleep straight in my coffin. ‘Furthermore,’ I told the dog, ‘I shall have my house, and my estate round it, free, as long as I live, and may keep my dogs as big and many as I choose, without fear of reproach. But I shall be very pleased if you and your master deign to pay me a visit there . . .’

  There is no foolishness in conversation with dogs, for they generally in my experience understand everything that is said to them – not necessarily the words – but the tone of voice conveys all the necessary significance and implications to them. And that is more than can be said for the exchange of compliments I enjoyed with the King of the Two Sicilies, as His Majesty is termed.

  I was presented at the Royal Palace on the occasion of the King’s birthday. I went with my sons and wore the uniform of a Brigadier-General in the Royal Company of Archers, and looked well enough, for a man of sixty, victim of at least three paralytic fits. I was somewhat afraid of a fall on the highly polished floor, but escaped that disgrace or indignity. The King spoke to me for five minutes, of which I scarcely understood five words – for apart from the lamentable rustiness of my Italian, he speaks habitually, I am told, in the Neapolitan dialect, which, Sir William assured me, Tuscans disdain – perhaps because they cannot understand it either. Had the subject been broached – or rather broachable – I would have repudiated their disdain, since I conceive Neapolitan to stand in the same relation to the Tuscan as our good Scots tongue does to the English. As it was, I answered His Majesty in a speech of somewhat the same length, and, I jalouse, equally unintelligible to him. The theme of my remarks was the beauty of his dominions and so on.

  There is in Naples, I find, a general belief in the possession and efficacy of the evil eye. They call the possessor of such power a jettatura: well, we ken the phenomenon well enough in Scotland, and though I do not believe in such a power, yet, in recent years I have had moments when I have wondered whether I have myself been afflicted by an ill-wisher – moments of mental frailty certainly, yet sufficiently recurrent to cause me both to tremble and to reproach myself for doing so. They say the King is a firm believer – that would have been a subject to discuss with him. His father, too, is reputed to have been intensely superstitious. Once, in a fit of temper, he kicked a servant – having a frank old feudal way with him in such matters; then, panicking, since there was a portrait of the Madonna almost within sight of the deed, pressed a gold coin on the fellow and begged him on no account to tell the Mother of God of the episode; could anything be more ludicrous and yet more human?

  We made expeditions to Pompeii – sad city of the dead – and to the remarkable temple of Paestum, built, Sir William believes, by the Sybarites – inconceivably grand; and to the dark Lake of Avernus, which reminded me, in the scenery, of Scotland, though Virgil makes it the point of entry to the Underworld: ‘facilis descensus Averni. . .’ as, alas, I know all too well. I was recalling the noble Scots version of the old Bishop of Dunkeld, Gavin Douglas: ‘Throwout the waste dungeon of Pluto king,’ when my attention was alerted by my three familiar figures whom I had not seen since that day in Douglasdale. The old woman sat by the water’s edge, spinning, while the fiddler played a melancholy dirge, and the girl danced in a weaving manner as if she would lead me into the water. I knew by now that they were not visible to my companions, and therefore steeled myself to make no remark, but rather to stop my ears to the music, and pretend there was nothing to disturb me; but I fear I displayed some discomposure, for the other members of our party looked at me with concern, and made haste to curtail our inspection of the gloomy and yet sublime scene, and return to our carriage.

  So we departed without incident, but with the music echoing insistently in my ears . . .

  Come, tak the bonnie road, cuddy,

  That winds about the fernie brae;

  That is the road to Elfland, cuddy,

  Where thou and I this night maun gae.

  And ye maun haud your tongue, cuddy,

  Whatever you may hear or see;

  For speak ae word in Elfland, cuddy,

  You’ll ne’er get back to your ain countrie.

  When we returned to Naples, they told me that Goethe, whom I had planned to visit in Weimar on my northward journey, was dead. I thought at once of Faustus, and of the great poet’s serenity notwithstanding his comprehension of the possibility of man’s voluntary surrender to evil. I thought of the airy beauty of his lyrics, of the terrible pathos of the scene before the Mater Dolorosa, and of the skilful and subtle handling of the characters of Mephistopheles and poor Margaret.

  ‘Yet,’ I
said, as no doubt I had said before – for old men are doomed to repeat themselves, just as misfortune may make them rave with Lear – ‘great artist as he was, Goethe was still a German, and none but a German would have had, I fancy, the audacity and arrogance to provoke, as he did in the Introduction, a comparison with the Book of Job, the grandest, most noble, and moving poem that ever was written . . .’

  Then I said: ‘But at least he died at home. We maun to Abbotsford . . .’

  That night I fell stiffly to my knees and prayed. I prayed as perhaps Michael Scott, my reputed wizard forebear, may have prayed in Naples, when he realized, in terror and awe, the profound depths and dangers into which his knowledge of what passed then for the magical sciences had lured and exposed him; and I thought of how he, too, under Italian skies, might have longed for our cold and rugged Borderland, that is yet in other moods so gentle, and beneficent in its pastoral beauty, and, like me, have sighed to lay his bones there, within sound of Tweed.

  And when I had prayed, I rose, a little unsteadily, to my feet, and turned to my desk, and began again to write:

  The Lord’s my herd and in his bucht

  He bields me siccar;

  He gars me ligg in a green mead

  Aside still watter.

  He wad my saul rejoice that has

  Kenn’d dule and shame;

  He sets me on his straucht gude gait

  That leads me hame.

  Tho’ daith’s mirk glen enshroudeth me

  And casts its shade,

  Yet I maun dreid nor scaith nor de’il;

  His staff, my aid.

  Thou’st breid and meat redd up for me

  In sicht o foes;

  My heid with oil anointed, Lord;

  My quaich o’erflows.

  Thy bounty and thy mercy, Lord

  My steps sall guide,

  That I may in thy ain demesne

  Forever bide.

  __________

  * The chronology of the last months of Scott’s life is somewhat confused in the manuscript; not surprisingly, considering his state of mind. He sailed from Portsmouth on 29 October 1831, accompanied by his daughter Anne and his elder son Walter, who had been given special leave by his regiment. They spent three weeks in Malta, and then left for Naples, where Scott’s younger son Charles, who was attached to the British legation, met them. They remained in the city till mid-April 1832. Young Walter had returned to his regiment, and so it was with Charles and Anne that Scott set out for Rome. Here they stayed until 11 May, when the painful journey home was resumed. (A.M.)

  Afterword by Charles Scott, Esq.

  My father died, at Abbotsford as he had wished, in the early afternoon of 21st September 1832. His last days had been painful for all, for his mind was increasingly disordered. Indeed, it is but just to say that there was a progressive deterioration, at least from the date of our departure from Rome on May 11th, and that this was rapid from the moment of his fourth paralytic seizure near Nimeguen on June 9th. His actual passing was tranquil, on one of those beautiful days of early autumn which so often favour Scotland with its most agreeable weather; the day was so warm that all the windows of the house were open, and, as he died in the dining-room on the ground floor, whither his bed had for convenience of all been moved, it may well be that the last sounds he heard were the rippling waters of his beloved Tweed.

  He was buried, beside my mother, within the majestic ruins of Dryburgh Abbey. The day was overcast with a high wind, and the whole countryside followed his coffin to the grave.

  Within a few days I was obliged to return to my post at the British Legation in Naples, and, passing through Rome, thought it proper to call at the Casa Bernini, where we had lodged, to acquaint the good people there with the circumstances of his death, and to thank them for the care which they had lavished upon us. I may be permitted to say that nothing, in my opinion, so clearly testifies to the virtue and nobility of my father’s character as the affection and reverence which he habitually excited in those who served him, even if only briefly.

  In the course of my visit I was informed that a manuscript had been discovered in my father’s chamber. How it had been overlooked in our departure I cannot conceive; nor do I know whether he had abandoned it of intention, improbable as that must seem. What is certain, however, is that he never mentioned it, or the loss of it, either in the few weeks during which he retained the use of at least some part of his great faculties, or in the period of his more severe disorder.

  I naturally thanked the good people for the care they had taken of it, and for restoring it to me, while they intimated that, had I not paused at Rome, they had intended to have it sent to me at Naples as soon as they had word of my return thither.

  I carried it south with me in order to peruse it at leisure. The perusal itself was difficult, for towards the end of his life my father’s physical infirmities rendered his hand-writing excessively hard to decipher. It may well be imagined that I read it with a mixture of interest, admiration, pain, and sorrow. On a personal or egotistical note, I felt a deep regret for my insouciance, and the demands I continued to make on him, at the time of his deep financial difficulties. It is little excuse to say that I was not fully aware of the extremities to which he was pushed; nor can I acquit myself on the grounds of youth, though I believe it is natural, or at least common, for those brought up to some degree of affluence, to assume unthinkingly a continuing paternal duty to provide for them.

  The manuscript would appear to have been written over a period of years, for it certainly refers to events in 1826 as if they had just taken place, while the last pages were evidently written in Rome. If this is so, it may be considered to have been compiled in harness, as it were, with the Journal which he commenced in, I believe, the autumn of 1825. Yet I am not persuaded that this is entirely accurate an interpretation, for there are some odd errors of chronology which seem to contradict it. In particular, he would appear to place my mother’s death somewhat earlier than it actually occurred, making it almost exactly contemporaneous with the pecuniary calamities that befell him. Furthermore, the handwriting, though not uniform, is less well-shaped than it was in those earlier years.

  This is a problem for my brother-in-law, John Gibson Lockhart, as his designated biographer, to solve. For my part, I incline to the possibility that the whole manuscript was composed during the last year of his life, and mostly during his sojourn in Italy; but that it was contrived in such a manner as to appear otherwise, and to be a disconnected, yet roughly chronological, record of what most occupied his mind in the last five or six years of his life. If this is so, it will be properly regarded, I believe, as a remarkable feat of intellectual and imaginative effort to have been performed by one as sorely afflicted as he was in these unhappy months. (I may add, in passing, that the sheets were unnumbered, and in some confusion of consecutive order, so that it is entirely possible that the manner in which I have been so bold as to arrange them is not that which he might himself have intended.)

  Whether, however, it was meant for publication – at least within the lifetime of his immediate relatives – must be doubtful. There is much here that is bound to pain those who loved him; and indeed there have been moments in my reading when I regretted the discovery of the manuscript. Nevertheless, since there is so much of intrinsic interest – and indeed anything from the pen of such a man as my father must be of interest – I am arranging to have copies made, and shall send one to Lockhart, that he may make what use of it he will.

  It is impossible to read the manuscript without being struck by the mixture of good sense and of what in his robuster moments my father would have dismissed as nonsense. Though he had a lively interest in superstition, and made good and discriminating use of the credulity which attaches itself to ideas of the supernatural, in both his poetry and his novels, no man, in the ordinary way of things, had his feet more securely planted on solid ground. Yet at times the more fantastic episodes, which can only be described by the
epithet ‘supernatural’, which he recounts here, are offered as if they actually occurred, or at least as if he believed them to have done so. It is some small comfort that he seems, in his last weeks of general lucidity, to have realized that they were the product merely of his disordered and sadly perplexed fancy; and the very last page which he wrote appears to express his determination to banish them from his mind by a firm adherence to the Grace of God. At least that is how I read his rendering into Scots of the Twenty-third Psalm.

  In his time in Italy my father’s health and state of mind varied extremely. This was due partly to his neglect of the diet prescribed by his doctors, and his carelessness with regard to what he ate and drank. I may say that I never once in my life saw him intoxicated – no man indeed had a harder head than he in his prime. Yet in his last months even a small quantity of wine – a couple of glasses, no more – could cause him to talk wildly in an indistinct and incoherent manner.

  In these moods he frequently spoke to me of his ‘guilt’. I need hardly say that my father, being a man of the utmost virtue, generosity of spirit, and probity, had less occasion to feel guilt than any man I have known, or than almost any of whom I have read. Yet there is no necessary contradiction in this; indeed I believe that the more virtuous a man, the more like he is to be conscious of his deficiencies and failures. Dr Johnson, whom my father was accustomed to hold up as a model exemplar of true Christianity, was – it is well known – almost morbidly conscious of his own shortcomings.