Chapter LVIII
Anecdotes of Constable—‘The Czar’—Plans the Magnum Opus—Anecdote of Longmans and Co.—Constable’s House and Equipage—John Ballantyne’s Habits—Horses and Dogs—Anecdote by Scott of his Liberality—Scott’s Sorrow at his Death.
At John Ballantyne’s house in Trinity, his great co-adjutor Constable was often to be seen. There Lockhart first met him. Struck by the majestic appearance of the publisher, he made a remark to Scott on Constable’s ‘gentlemanlike’ (publishers were only ‘booksellers’ in those days) ‘and distinguished appearance.’ ‘Ay,’ replied Scott, ‘Constable is indeed a grand-looking chield. He puts me in mind of Fielding’s apology for Lady Booby—to wit, that Joseph Andrews had an air which, to those who had not seen many noblemen, would give an idea of nobility.’ He is said to have been a large feeder and deep drinker: of a violent temper, but ‘easily overawed by people of consequence.’ He was, on the whole, not one of Scott’s favourites—a circumstance, however, which was more owing to the great man’s blind partiality for the Ballantynes, with whom Constable necessarily came into frequent contact. Scott, however, praises Constable as ‘generous and far from bad-hearted.’ Among his brothers of ‘the trade’ Constable was nicknamed ‘the Czar,’and also ‘the Crafty.’ Scott declared that Constable was ‘the prince of book-sellers.’ He considered that the Crafty knew more of the business of a bookseller in planning and executing popular works than any man of his time. His imperious style was natural to the man, and his unaided rise to eminence in his important calling largely justified his pride. His share in the blame for the disaster of 1826 was at the time exaggerated, unfortunately also in the mind of Scott himself. It was the Ballantyne co-partnery that led to the unfortunate bill transactions, and the great pity was that both Constable and Scott took these tragic jokers on their own fictitious valuation. Constable I believe to have been truly a great man and in all respects a gentleman: as different in mental qualities as he was in physical dignity from the bounding brothers of Kelso. Who can fail to admit the genius of the man who foresaw the value of the Waverley Novels, and who provided Scott with the greatest consolation of his last sad years—the magnum opus of the collected edition, and thus enabled him to carry out his romantic resolve to pay the so-called debts to the full? John Ballantyne told Lockhart a good story of Constable’s fondness for bestowing nicknames. ‘One day a partner of the house of Longman was dining with him in the country, to settle an important piece of business, about which there occurred a good deal of difficulty. “What fine swans you have in your pond there!” said the Londoner, by way of parenthesis.—“Swans!” cried Constable; “they are only geese, man. There are just five of them, if you please to observe, and their names are Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown.” This skit cost the Crafty a good bargain.’ Lockhart soon became a frequent visitor at Constable’s country seat of Craigcrook Castle (afterwards tenanted by Francis Jeffrey), and says that he did the honours of the ancient home of noble Grahams with all the ease that might have been looked for had he been the long-descended owner of the place. He greatly admired Constable’s ‘manly and vigorous’ conversation, full of old Scotch anecdotes, which he told with a spirit and humour only second to his great author’s. ‘His very equipage,’ Lockhart adds, ‘kept up the series of contrasts between him and the two Ballantynes. Constable went back and forward between the town and Polton in a deep-hung and capacious green barouche, without any pretence at heraldic blazonry, drawn by a pair of sleek, black, long-tailed horses, and conducted by a grave old coachman in plain blue livery. The Printer of the Canongate drove himself and his wife about the streets and suburbs in a snug machine, which did not overburthen one powerful and steady cob:—while the gay Auctioneer, whenever he left the saddle for the box, mounted a bright blue dogcart, and rattled down the Newhaven Road with two high-mettled steeds prancing tandem before him.’ Johnnie, indeed, kept up a good stable, hunted the fox at times, and had the pleasant whim of naming his numerous steeds after various characters in Scott’s works. His daily mount was a milk-white hunter, y-clept Old Mortality, and he was always attended by a leash or two of greyhounds, which he named Die Vernon, Jenny Dennison, and so on. At business he appeared in sporting half-dress,—‘a light-grey frock, with emblems of the chase on its silver buttons, white cord breeches, and jockey-boots in Meltonian order.’ Scott was a constant frequenter of his auction rooms in Hanover Street, at the door of which his favourite Maida was to be seen waiting his arrival from the Court, couched among Johnnie’s greyhounds. Such was the frivolous, but astute, underminer, who succeeded to the end in maintaining a fatal hold on the great genius, and finally left him to toil as a slave, often at a loss for money for mere current expenses, during the last years of what might have been one of the happiest of lives. It is a melancholy fact, and perhaps, after all, his own favourite saying fits it best—that often the wisest of men keep, as it were, the average stock of folly only in reserve, to be all expended on some one flagrant absurdity. One can at least understand Scott’s affection for John Ballantyne, when one thinks of such an incident as this, related by Scott himself: ‘A poor divinity student was attending his sale one day, and Johnnie remarked to him that he looked as if he were in bad health. The young man assented with a sigh. “Come,” said Ballantyne, “I think I ken the secret of a sort of draft that would relieve you—particularly,” he added, handing him a cheque for £$ or £10—“particularly, my dear, if taken upon an empty stomach.”
John Ballantyne died at Edinburgh in the summer of 1821. Scott and Lockhart attended his funeral in the Canongate churchyard. ‘As we stood together’ (the latter relates), ‘while they were smoothing the turf over John’s remains, the heavens, which had been dark and slaty, cleared suddenly, and the midsummer sun shone forth in his strength. Scott, ever awake to the “skiey influences,” cast his eye along the overhanging line of the Calton Hill, with its gleaming walls and towers, and then turning to the grave again, “I feel,” he whispered in my ear, “as if there would be less sunshine for me from this day forth.”’
John Ballantyne was thus taken away from the evil to come, but James lived till 1833. Archibald Constable died on the 21st of July 1827. His proud spirit could not survive the tremendous downfall of his splendid fortunes. All his great undertakings, except the Miscellany, had passed from his control. He was reduced to ‘an obscure closet of a shop,’ and found himself without either capital or credit to start a new career. Of all with whom Scott had to do in the business of life, he is the only man in whose case Scott’s natural generosity did not at once overcome every shadow of well or ill founded resentment or grudge.