Chapter LX
The Commercial Disaster—Ruin of Ballantyne (Scott) and Constable—Scott’s Feeling—Universal Sympathy—Offer of Help—Brave Reply—Cheerful Spirit—Constable—The Agreement—Removal from Castle Street—Death of Lady Scott—The Visit to Paris.
James Ballantyne on his deathbed declared that all the appearances of his prosperity were merely shadows. But Scott up to the end of 1825 had no idea of the magnitude of the crisis that had been so long preparing. On the 18th of December in that year he penned in his Journal that melancholy summary of his career: ‘What a life mine has been! Half-educated, almost wholly neglected or left to myself; stuffing my head with most nonsensical trash, and undervalued by most of my companions for a time; getting forward, and held a bold and clever fellow, contrary to the opinion of all who thought me a mere dreamer; broken-hearted for two years; my heart handsomely pieced again—but the crack will remain till my dying day. Rich and poor four or five times; once on the verge of ruin, yet opened a new source of wealth almost overflowing. Now to be broken in my pitch of pride.... Nobody in the end can lose a penny by me—that is one comfort.’ Following entries prove that Ballantyne professed confidence. Even on 14th January, when Scott had received ’an odd mysterious letter’ from Constable, hinting calamity, James had no doubts! On Tuesday the 17th the blow fell. Ballantyne came in the morning to say that he had arranged to stop. His own account of the interview is: ‘It was between eight and nine in the morning that I made the final communication. No doubt he was greatly stunned—but, upon the whole, he bore it with wonderful fortitude. He asked—“Well, what is the actual step we must first take? I suppose we must do something?” I reminded him that two or three thousand pounds were due that day, so that we had only to do what we must do—refuse payment—to bring the disclosure sufficiently before the world. He took leave of me with these striking words—“Well, James, depend upon that, I will never forsake you.”’
In the Journal of that day—‘I felt rather sneaking as I came home from the Parliament House—felt as if I were liable monstrari digito in no very pleasant way. But this must be borne cum caeteris.’ On which Lord Cockburn remarks: ‘very natural for him to feel so; but it was the feeling of nobody else.’
From Cockburn’s pages we can realise the astounding effect of the news of Scott’s implication in the disaster upon his friends and fellow-citizens. The ‘black Tuesday’ became a recollection of sadness and pain to all who personally knew him. The destruction of half the city could not have caused greater astonishment and sorrow. His professional brethren now for the first time learned that Scott had ‘dabbled in trade.’ ‘How humbled,’ says Cockburn, ‘we felt when we saw him—the pride of us all—dashed from his lofty and honourable station, and all the fruits of his well-worked talents gone. He had not then even a political enemy. There was not one of those whom his thoughtlessness had so sorely provoked, who would not have given every spare farthing he possessed to retrieve Sir Walter. Well do I remember his first appearance after this calamity was divulged, when he walked into Court one day in January 1826. There was no affectation, and no reality, of facing it; no look of indifference or defiance; but the manly and modest air of a gentleman conscious of some folly, but of perfect rectitude, and of most heroic and honourable resolutions. It was on that very day, I believe, that he said a very fine thing. Some of his friends offered him, or rather proposed to offer him, enough of money, as was supposed, to enable him to arrange with his creditors. He paused for a moment; and then, recollecting his powers, said proudly—“No! this right hand shall work it all off.” His friend William Clerk supped with him one night after his ruin was declared. They discussed the whole affair openly and playfully; till at last they laughed over their noggins at the change, and Sir Walter observed that he felt something like Lambert and the other Regicides, who, Pepys says, when he saw them going to be hanged and quartered, were as cheerful and comfortable as any gentlemen could be in that situation.’
This probably refers to the evening, mentioned in Scott’s Journal, when his daughter was very greatly surprised by the loud hilarity of Clerk and his host. ‘But do people suppose,’ adds Scott, ‘that he was less sorry for his poor sister,1 or I for my lost fortune?’ He declares that pride was his strongest passion—a passion which never hinged upon world’s gear, which was always with him—light come, light go!
Constable had stood like a hero in the breach to the last moment. His last device, a good one if he could have by magic imparted his own knowledge, foresight, and sublime faith to a board of directors, was to take Lockhart (in the capacity of a confidential friend of the author of Waverley) with him to the Bank of England, and to apply for a loan of from £100,000 to £200,000 on the security of the copyrights. These, it must be remembered, were the Encyclopedia Britannica, half of the Edinburgh Review, nearly all Scott’s poetry, the Waverley Novels, and the Life of Napoleon, on which Scott was at the time working. Lockhart refused to interfere without direct instructions from Sir Walter. Poor Constable, he says, became livid with rage.
The claims against Scott were found in the end to amount to £130,000. All the world knows the course Scott elected to take; how he at once put his affairs in the hands of trustees, and became, by his own offer, the vassal of his creditors for life, toiling henceforward to pay their claims, not to enrich himself. From his side it was a noble sacrifice, as noble as any ever offered on the altar of honour. If the debts had been real, if he had actually had in possession the sum and used it, no other course would have been possible salvo honore. But commercial debts, the largely fictitious product of stamps and paper, should have been paid commercially. Such a course, he himself said, he might have advised a client to take, and it would have saved him much sorrow, pain, and trouble, without harming any man. However, he preferred it otherwise, and received the news of the acceptance of his offer as if it had been a mighty favour. He wrote in his Journal: ‘This is handsome and confidential, and must warm my best efforts to get them out of the scrape.’
The agreement was finally, not of course without harassment and difficulty, passed. He was left in possession of Abbotsford, his official salary was left him to support his family, everything else was sold for behoof of the creditors, and all his future literary gains were assigned to them in advance. On March 15th he left his house in Castle Street, and on that night he wrote in his Journal: ‘I never reckoned upon a change in this particular so long as I held an office in the Court of Session. In all my former changes of residence it was from good to better—this is retrograding. I leave this house for sale, and I cease to be an Edinburgh citizen, in the sense of being a proprietor, which my father and I have been for sixty years at least. So farewell, poor 39, and may you never harbour worse people than those who now leave you.’
Very soon after the departure from Castle Street a second calamity, probably hastened by the former, overtook the family. Lady Scott died at Abbotsford on the 14th of May. Scott, who was engaged in his Court duties at Edinburgh, and staying now in Mrs. Brown’s lodgings, North St. David Street, reached Abbotsford late in the evening of the 15th. His weakly daughter Anne, worn out with attendance, was hysterical when he arrived. The entries in his Journal are sadly touching: ‘When I contrast what this place now is with what it has been not long since, I think my heart will break. Lonely, aged, deprived of my family—all but poor Anne; an impoverished, an embarrassed man, deprived of the sharer of my thoughts, who could always talk down my sense of the calamitous apprehensions which break the heart that must bear them alone.’
The funeral took place on the 22nd at Dryburgh. Scott mentions very kindly the Rev. E. B. Ramsay, who performed the funeral service. This gentleman afterwards became famous, when Dean of Edinburgh, by his well-known book Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life.
And now Scott found the task he had imposed upon himself bracing him against despondency. He returned to Edinburgh and his old ‘task,’ thankful that it was of a graver nature (the Life of Napoleon), and determined to fight on ‘for the sake of the children and of my own character.’
A visit to London and Paris was necessitated in October by his work on Napoleon. The change did him good, and Lockhart mentions that his behaviour under misfortunes so terrible had gained for him ‘a deep and respectful sympathy, which was brought home to him in a way not to be mistaken.’ This expedition for information had cost him £200—a matter for serious consideration in his changed circumstances.
Notes
1 Miss Elizabeth Clerk’s sudden death had also occurred on the 17th of January.