Chapter LXI
House in Walker Street—Ill-health—Extraordinary Labours—Article on Hoffman—Kindness to Literary People—Murray’s Party—Theatrical Fund Dinner—Life of Napoleon—Payment of £28,000 to Creditors—The Lockharts at Portobello—Grandfather’s Tales—Domestic Happiness—Visit of Adolphus.
On resuming his duties in Edinburgh at the end of November (1826), Scott went to reside in a furnished house in Walker Street, which he had taken for the winter. In his Journal, 27th November, he says: ‘Walter came and supped with us, which diverted some heavy thoughts. It is impossible not to compare this return to Edinburgh with others in more happy times. But we should rather recollect under what distress of mind I took up my lodgings in Mrs. Brown’s last summer, and then the balance weighs deeply on the favourable side. This house is comfortable and convenient.’ It was for the sake of his daughter’s company that he had taken this house. The winter, however, proved a weary time. His incessant toil at his Napoleon was hampered by continual ill-health—successive attacks of rheumatism, which might well have excused him from work of any kind. But his watchword was, ‘I am now at my oar, and I must row hard.’ To crown all his troubles, the weather was exceptionally cold and trying. He could not but think often of the days when rain and cold and long night journeys did him no harm, and he was painfully conscious of a speedy break-up of the hard-wrought machine. Bad nights were the rule, and he was sometimes sick with mere pain. Sometimes he notes his work, proof-sheets and the like, as ‘finished mechanically.’ ‘All well,’ he ends up on 21st December, ‘if the machine would but keep in order, but “The spinning-wheel is auld and stiff.” I shall never see the threescore and ten, and shall be summed up at a discount. No help for it, and no matter either.’ Yet, even in these circumstances, he wrote more than his task. One of these minor pieces was an article on Hoffman for the Foreign Quarterly, a review edited by R. P. Gillies. It was done purely as a kindness to Gillies, giving, as Lockhart says, a poor brother author £100 at the expense of considerable time and drudgery to himself. He had done the same in numberless instances, often for persons whose only claim on him was that of the common vocation. At this time he naturally went but little into society, but his enjoyment of good company could still be keen. On spending an evening with John A. Murray, he says: ‘When I am out with a party of my Opposition friends, the day is often merrier than when with our own set. Is it because they are cleverer? Jeffrey and Harry Cockburn are, to be sure, very extraordinary men; yet it is not owing to that entirely. I believe both parties meet with the feeling of something like novelty—we have not worn out our jests in daily contact.’
On the 23rd of February 1827 he presided at the famous Theatrical Fund Dinner, at which he publicly admitted his authorship of the Waverley Novels. All he says of the incident is, ‘Meadowbank taxed me with the novels, and to end that farce at once I pleaded guilty, so that splore is ended.’ Of course, as a matter of fact, the secret had been an open one from the day of the first meeting of Ballantyne’s creditors. When Scott was thinking of himself as liable monstrari digito as the partner of an insolvent firm, every one else was thinking of him as the now-revealed ‘author of Waverley.’ ‘Scott ruined,’ Earl Dudley exclaimed on hearing the news, ‘the author of Waverley ruined! Good God! let every man to whom he has given months of delight give him a sixpence, and he will rise to-morrow morning richer than Rothschild!’ That was probably what was in the mind of every man who gazed on Scott’s calm, honest face in the first days of trouble.
On the 7th of June he finished Napoleon, which had grown on his hands, much beyond the original estimate, to nine closely-printed volumes. The work produced £18,000 for his creditors, so that in eighteen months he had actually diminished his obligations by £28,000.
One of the most touching episodes of Scott’s life was his loving anxiety for his invalid grandson, the child of Lockhart and Sophia. Knowing the fearful strain that Sir Walter was now keeping up in working double tides for his bondholding masters, Lockhart and his wife did what they could to induce him to moderate his zeal. ‘But nothing,’ says Lockhart, ‘was so useful as the presence of his invalid grandson. The poor child was at this time so far restored as to be able to sit on his pony again; and Sir Walter, who had conceived, the very day he finished Napoleon, the notion of putting together a series of Tales on the History of Scotland, somewhat in the manner of Mr. Croker’s on that of England, rode daily among the woods with his “Hugh Littlejohn,” and told the story, and ascertained that it suited the comprehension of boyhood, before he reduced it to writing.’ During the rest of this year he wrote new matter which filled five to six volumes in the uniform edition of his works, but this Lockhart thinks was light and easy compared with ‘the perilous drudgery’ of the preceding eighteen months.
Ill-health and the perpetual consciousness of his bondage had marvellously little effect as yet on the quality of his work. To friends who visited him casually he seems to have rarely alluded to any of his troubles. Adolphus, however, mentions that once, when speaking of his Life of Napoleon, he said in a quiet but touching tone, ‘I could have done it better, if I had written at more leisure, and with a mind more at ease.’ Adolphus was deeply impressed by the sight of his quiet cheerfulness among his family and their young friends. He has preserved one of Scott’s remarks on the subject of happiness which is both characteristic and, considering the time, strikingly suggestive. Scott having said something about an accident which had spoiled the promised pleasure of a visit to his daughter in London, then observed, ‘I have had as much happiness in my time as most men, and I must not complain now.’ Adolphus replied that, whatever had been his share of happiness, no one could have laboured better for it. Scott’s answer was, ‘I consider the capacity to labour as part of the happiness I have enjoyed.’ In mentioning Adolphus (who had written a book on the authorship of the Waverley Novels) and his visit, Scott wrote in his Journal, ‘He is a modest as well as an able man, and I am obliged to him for the delicacy with which he treated a matter in which I was personally so much concerned.’