Chapter LV
Scotland Edinburgh Society—Lockhart’s Opinion—Scott’s Drives in Edinburgh—Love of Antiquities—The Sunday Dinners at 39 Castle Street—The Maclean Clephanes—Erskine, Clerk, C. K. Sharpe, Sir A. Boswell, W. Allan,—Favourite Dishes.
Ignorant prejudice gradually disappeared. The charm of Scott’s conversation was found to be as great, in fact the same, as that of his writings. Mingling with and wishing to emulate London society, Edinburgh great folks came to understand that social intercourse ought to aim at enjoyment and relaxation, not at the display of alleged wit and amateur disquisitions on speculative themes. Then they discovered that Scott’s easy, natural humour, his ever-ready and picturesque descriptions, his quaint old-world sayings and diverting sketches and anecdotes, nay, his very prejudices, always honest and so very lovable when understood to their foundation, were unique treasures even from the narrowest point of view. This was what all, long before 1818, recognised whose opinion was worth considering. But Lockhart, who had the best means of knowing, as being himself ‘one of them,’ says that even then the old theory, that Scott’s conversation was ‘commonplace,’ lingered on in the general opinion of the city, especially among the smart praters of the Outer House. Of course it was the cue of these praters to differ from their elders, and few of them, after all, had perhaps enjoyed what they made a boast of affecting to depreciate. Lockhart, who was certainly in the Whig sense the strongest intellect that ever adorned Edinburgh, both enjoyed and appreciated. And fortunately for us minores, he has told what he saw and rejoiced in. He says: ‘It was impossible to listen to Scott’s oral narrations, whether gay or serious, or to the felicitous fun with which he parried absurdities of all sorts, without discovering better qualities in his talk than wit—and of a higher order; I mean especially a power of vivid painting—the true and primary sense of what is called Imagination. He was like Jacques—though not a “Melancholy Jacques”; and “moralised” a common topic into a “thousand similitudes.” Shakespeare and the banished Duke would have found him “full of matter.” He disliked mere disquisitions in Edinburgh, and prepared impromptus in London; and puzzled the promoters of such things sometimes by placid silence, sometimes by broad merriment. To such men he seemed common-place—not so to the most dexterous masters in what was to some of them almost a science; not so to Rose, Hallam, Moore, or Rogers,—to Ellis, Mackintosh, Croker, or Canning.’
When in Edinburgh, Scott’s only formal outing was an afternoon drive in an open carriage, sometimes to Blackford Hill, or Ravelston, and so home by Corstorphine, sometimes to Portobello, keeping as close as possible to the sea. An old man who died last year (1905) used to tell how, when he was a boy, he remembered Scott alighting and coming some distance across a field to speak a few kind words to him and ask after his parents, in whom he took an interest. When he went home, his mother told him about the great man and bade her son remember that day, for if he lived to be an old man, he would be proud to talk of it to his children’s children. As he drove through the city, it was Scott’s greatest enjoyment to gaze and muse upon its natural beauties, and especially its remaining antiquities. He would often make a long circuit in order, as Lockhart observed, ‘to spend a few minutes on the vacant esplanade of Holyrood, or under the darkest shadows of the Castle rock, where it overhangs the Grassmarket, and the huge slab that still marks where the gibbet of Porteous and the Covenanters had its station. His coachman knew him too well to move at a Jehu’s pace amidst such scenes as these. No funeral hearse crept more leisurely than did his landau up the Canongate or the Cowgate; and not a queer tottering gable but recalled to him some long-buried memory of splendour or bloodshed, which, by a few words, he set before the hearer in the reality of life. His image is so associated in my mind with the antiquities of his native place, that I cannot now revisit them without feeling as if I were treading on his gravestone.’
But of all pleasant memories of the Master well-beloved, the most delightful to conjure up is that of the good Clerk as host at the Sunday ‘dinner without the silver dishes,’ as he was wont to call it. It was always a gathering of dear and long-cherished friends. All were delighted to meet, and all were prepared to be happy. Gladdest of all was their host, who came into the room ‘rubbing his hands, his face bright and gleesome, like a boy arriving at home for the holidays, his Peppers and Mustards gambolling about his heels, and even the stately Maida grinning and wagging his tail in sympathy.’ Most of the intimates who came to these parties have already been mentioned. There was Mrs. Maclean Clephane, with whom Scott would playfully dispute on the subject of Ossian. Her daughters would accompany her, to delight all, especially Scott, with the poetry and music of their native isles. They had made him their guardian by their own choice, and were loved for their own sakes. The eldest was that Lady Crompton with whom, as he tells in the Journal, he travelled to Glasgow in September 1827, and had ‘as pleasant a journey as the kindness, wit, and accomplishments of my companion could make it.’ When they reached Glasgow, they met, at the Buck’s Head, Mrs. Maclean Clephane and her two daughters. He mentions that after dinner the ladies sang, ‘particularly Aunt Jane, who has more taste and talent than half the people going with great reputations on their backs.’ Then there were the Skenes, the Macdonald Buchanans, and all the nieces and nephews of the Clerks’ table alliance. ‘The well-beloved Erskine,’ says Lockhart, ‘was seldom absent; and very often Terry or James Ballantyne came with him—sometimes, though less frequently, Constable. To say nothing of such old cronies as Clerk, Thomson, and Kirkpatrick Sharpe.’ It was of his boyhood’s friend and mentor, Clerk, that Scott said he feared he would leave the world little more than the report of his fame. It was his opinion, as well as that of other competent judges, that he had never met a man of greater powers than Clerk. Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe was also regarded by Scott very highly, and is sketched in a lively page in the Journal, 1825. His effeminacy of voice, his clever and fanciful drawings—which he was too aristocratic to use for increasing his small income—his odd curiosity for scandal centuries old, made Sharpe a very remarkable figure. ‘My idea is’ (says Scott) ‘that C. K. S. with his oddities, tastes, satire, and high aristocratic feelings, resembles Horace Walpole—perhaps in his person also, in a general way.’
Lockhart mentions also Sir Alexander Boswell, author of the humorous song, Jeannie dang the Weaver, and a great bibliomaniac, Sir Alexander Don of Newton, ‘the model of a cavalier,’ and William Allan, R.A., whom Scott calls a very agreeable, simple-mannered, and pleasant man. Allan became Sir William, President of the Royal Scottish Academy from 1838 to 1850. In July 1826 Scott mentions his having been to see Allan’s picture of ‘the Landing of Queen Mary.’ Three or four of these friends, with Scott and his family, took their places every Sunday at the ‘plain dinner’ in No. 39 Castle Street.
Scott kept a bounteously loaded table. He was himself a hearty eater, preferring plain substantial fare. He was not a gourmand, still less a glutton. His one good meal was breakfast. At dinner his appetite was neither keen nor nice. ‘The only dishes he was at all fond of were the old-fashioned ones to which he had been accustomed in the days of Saunders Fairford.’ Readers of the Novels have heard of them all, and few will forget the conclusion of the Fortunes of Nigel: ‘My lords and lieges, let us all to our dinner, for the cock-a-leekie is cooling.’