Complete Fictional Works of John Buchan (Illustrated), page 957
[Flanders and Paris]
Paul’s Letters to his Kinsfolk deserves to be read, for it is is a revealing piece of autobiography. It contains no fine writing, for the scenes which Scott visited and the company in which he moved seemed to him to be too august for sentiment and to demand a faithful and sober chronicle. It is journalism, no doubt, but journalism at its best. He describes the little ancient cities of Flanders; the field of Waterloo, and the battle which he did not perfectly understand, since, like most of his British contemporaries, he does scant justice to Blücher. Then comes Paris, where his demi-god Wellington received him kindly, and he hob-nobbed with monarchs and field-marshals, and attended a review of the Russian troops on a Ukraine charger, and was kissed in public on both cheeks by Platoff the Cossack Hetman. Never had a man of letters had such an experience, and Scott felt that at last he was being given a taste of the life of action. But more remarkable than the vivid narrative of travel is the moderation and good sense of the book, qualities which appear also in his poem The Field of Waterloo, produced, like Don Roderick, in aid of war charities. Napoleon for twenty years had ridden Scott’s imagination. When Abbotsford was beginning he used to entertain French prisoners from Selkirk in its little dining-room and eagerly cross-examine them about the looks and sayings and doings of their Emperor. He recognized his surpassing greatness, and concerning him there is none of the conventional railing of his contemporaries, only the romancer’s regret that he did not choose to die with his Guard on his last battle-field. Nor is there any bitterness against the French people; on the contrary, though Blücher had made much of him, there is a stern criticism of Prussian brutality. But even here he is reasonable; he realizes how many scores Prussia and all Europe had to pay off; he understands, though he does not approve, the feeling of Lord Dudley when he wrote: “I own I have a pleasure in seeing this confounded people, that have tormented all mankind ever since I can remember anything, and made us pay ten per cent. upon our incomes, to say nothing of other taxes, plundered and insulted by a parcel of square-faced barbarians from the Wolga.” Staunch royalist, too, though he was, he saw the weakness of the restored Bourbons, and forecast the reaction which would bring them down.
He came home by way of London, where young Gala was enthralled by Byron’s pale beauty, and by Sheffield, where a workman in a cutler’s shop offered his master a week’s free work for Scott’s autograph. He had presents in his portmanteau for everybody at Abbotsford, family, servants and the estate workers. He returned to find his friend Skene of Rubislaw there, and the little drawing-room equipped with new chintzes, which he was blind enough not to notice. The house was growing piece-meal round the core of the old farm with the irregularity of the British Constitution, the young plantations were coming on, and the young Walter, now fourteen years of age, had killed his first blackcock. But his old charger Daisy, a white thoroughbred, had taken a sudden aversion to her master and would not suffer him to mount her; Scott took it for a sign that he had reached middle age and must henceforth content himself with a homely cob. That autumn he acquired what he had long been in treaty for, the lands of Kaeside which ran south to the wild sheet of water called Cauldshiels loch, the legendary home of a water-bull. The original hundred and thirty acres of his estate were now nearer a thousand.
IV
Scott had found on his return another guest at Abbotsford besides the laird of Rubislaw — James Ballantyne with a load of bills, confused accounts, apologies and supplications. The new novel which was to clear his feet must not be delayed, so, while Paul’s Letters was in the press, and Terry was preparing a dramatic version of Guy Mannering for the London stage, The Antiquary was begun and finished within four months. It was published by Constable early in May 1816, about the time of the death of the author’s eldest brother, John, whose modest bequests did something to relieve the embarrassment of the remaining brother, Thomas.
[The Antiquary]
The Antiquary, though James Ballantyne shook his head over it, was at once successful, and, according to Lockhart, it was Scott’s favourite among his works. “It wants the romance of Waverley and the adventure of Guy Mannering,” Scott wrote to Terry, “and yet there is some salvation about it, for if a man will paint from nature, he will be likely to amuse those who are daily looking at it.” It was a novel of contemporary life, a story of familiar characters, a picture of his own early associations, and in some degree a portrait of himself. He had his prototype for Edie Ochiltree in a famous bedesman, Andrew Gemmels, who had fought at Fontenoy and in Scott’s youth had been a notable figure on the Border, dying in 1793 at the age of 106. Jonathan Oldbuck is drawn from the antiquary George Constable, who had first awakened his boyish interest in the past, and there are elements in him, perhaps, of John Ramsay of Ochtertyre.
The plot is elaborate, artificial, and unimportant, once again of the “missing heir” school; Lovel, the young hero, is colourless, and it is hard to be interested in his love affair with Isabella Wardour. The construction is careless — the sun is made to set in the east and there are two Tuesdays in one week; and the writing in its uninspired moments is apt to be pompous and Grandisonian. Just before the great scene when the Wardours and Edie are cut off by the sea, there are leaden descriptions of scenery and weather, and Isabella on one occasion addresses her lover thus: “I am much embarrassed, Mr Lovel, by your — I would not willingly use a strong word — romantic and hopeless pertinacity. It is for yourself I plead, that you would consider the calls your country has on your talents, that you will not waste, in an idle and fanciful indulgence of an ill-placed predilection, time, which, well redeemed by active exertion, should lay the foundation of future distinction.” “It is enough, Miss Wardour,” Lovel replies, and it is certainly enough.
Having said this much, I decline to allow the devil’s advocate a further word. There is little violent action in the book, but the interest never for one moment flags. It is primarily a comedy of Scottish country life, and the main characters, though carefully and truthfully drawn, are all given their “humours” — fantastic traits several degrees above reality — Oldbuck’s pedantry, his sister’s notableness, Sir Arthur’s pride of race, Hector MacIntyre’s inflammable conceit. The comedy key is perfectly maintained; the only villain is Dousterswivel, who is no more than a pantomime rogue. To match the gentry we have peasants in the same vein — Jenny Rintherout, Mrs Heukbane and Mrs Mailsetter, Caxon the barber, Davie the post-boy — all faithful transcripts, but inspired with the comic spirit. Let me instance three episodes which seem to me comedy triumphant — Grizel Oldbuck’s story of Rob Tull, the scene in which Mrs Mailsetter and her cronies gossip in the post-office, and that in which Oldbuck, at the alarm of invasion, girds on his old sword.
The dramatic contrast to this staple of homely humours and oddities is to be found partly in the dark stateliness of the Glenallans (which skirts, but does not stumble into, melodrama), and the two or three humble figures who are invested with an heroic or tragic grandeur. Of the latter Edie Ochiltree stands first, the most Shakespearean figure, it has been well said, outside Shakespeare. He is drawn with minute realism — his beggar’s gaiety, his vagabond’s philosophy, his tincture of radicalism, his resourcefulness like that of Odysseus. But at high moments he is allowed to attain a homespun magnificence, and to speak words which, though wholly in character, are yet parts of the world’s poetry. Take the scene of the storm: —
“Good man,” said Sir Arthur, “can you think of nothing — of no help. —— I’ll make you rich — I’ll give you a farm — I’ll — —”
“Our riches will soon be equal,” said the beggar, looking out upon the strife of the waters—”they are sae already; for I hae nae land, and you would give your fair bounds and barony for a square yard of rock that would be dry for twal hours.”
Or take his classic profession of patriotism: —
“Me no muckle to fight for! Isna there the country to fight for, and the burnsides that I gang daundering beside, and the hearths o’ the gudewives that gie me my bit bread, and the bits o’ weans that come toddling to play wi’ me when I come about a landward toun? — Deil!” he continued, grasping his pikestaff with great emphasis, “an’ I had as gude pith as I hae gude will and a gude cause, I should gie some o’ them a day’s kemping.”
Next there is Saunders Mucklebackit, the fisherman, who, at his son’s death, masters his grief till the coffin has left the house, and then breaks down in a passion of tearless sobbing, but next day is found mending the “auld black bitch of a boat” which had drowned his boy. He, too, is made through strong emotion to rise to an epic dignity.
“What would you have me do,” he asks, “unless I wanted to see four children starve because ane is drooned? It’s weel wi’ you gentles, that can sit in the house wi’ handkerchers to your een when ye lose a friend; but the likes o’ us maun to our wark again if our hearts were beating as hard as my hammer.... Yet what needs ane to be angry at her, that has neither soul nor sense? — though I am no that muckle better mysell. She’s but a rickle o’ auld rotten deals nailed thegither, and warped wi’ the wind and the sea — and I am a dour carle battered by winds and foul weather at sea and land till I am maist as senseless as hersell. She maun be mended though again’ the morning tide — that’s a thing o’ necessity.”
Saunders Mucklebackit is the east-coast fisherman with Norse blood in him, and he has something of the austere dignity of the Sagas. But his mother, Elspeth of the Craigburnfoot, is like some witch-wife out of the Elder Edda. She sits by her fireside, oblivious of the deaths of her kin, with her crazy mind on unhappy things that befell long ago in a world of pride and pageantry far distant from a fisherman’s hovel. In her madness she recites the best ballad Scott ever wrote, the ballad of the Red Harlaw, and she expounds it in the old manner of high romance.
Ye maun ken, hinnie, that this Roland Cheyne, for as poor and auld as I sit in the chimmey-neuk, was my forbear, and an awfu’ man he was that day in the fight, but specially after the Earl had fa’en: for he blamed himsell for the counsel he gave, to fight before Mar came up wi’ Mearns and Aberdeen and Angus.
And when death comes to this great tragic figure, a survival from another world, Scott, after his fashion, artfully slackens the tension and brings the tale back to the homely fisher life.
“Your honour,” said Allison Breck, who was next in age to the deceased, “suld send doun something to us for keeping up our hearts at the lyke-wake, for a’ Saunder’s gin, puir man, was drucken out at the burial o’ Steenie, and we’ll no get mony to sit dry-lipped with the corpse.”
The book is richer perhaps than any of the others in cunning detail, for Scott wrote of a world which he knew intimately — Monkbarn’s antiquities, Sir Arthur’s genealogical whimsies, the life of the burghs and the farm-towns and the fishing-huts, the back-world of the peasant mind. And it is inspired throughout by the spirit of a large and sympathetic understanding. The stiff lairds become human in the presence of sorrow. The Tory Sir Arthur is less tenderly dealt with than the Whig Oldbuck. Caxon the barber speaks his mind on “the democraws, as they ca’ them, that are again’ the king and the law, and hair-powder and dressing o’ gentleman’s wigs — a wheen blackguards,” but Edie the blue-gown and Saunders Mucklebackit the fisherman, sturdy democrats both, are the true heroes of the tale.
V
From the heights of creation Scott had to descend to the dismal business of his trading ventures. It is a subject on which it is impossible at this time of day to get at the exact truth. The papers dealing with the downfall of 1826 are extant, and may be studied in the National Library of Scotland, but the relations between Scott and the Ballantynes must remain largely in the realm of guesswork. The books were never properly balanced, the existing financial statements are obscure, and the student has nothing to go upon but ex parte and often contradictory declarations. Many since that date have tried to shed light on the darkness, but all have failed. Three years before his death Lockhart wrote, “The details of Scott’s commercial perplexities remain in great measure inexplicable,” and, if one so near the events themselves was puzzled, a later commentator dare not be dogmatic.
The settlement of the two businesses arrived at through Constable’s help in the autumn of 1813 was not final. The publishing firm of John Ballantyne and Company, though no longer operating, was not fully wound up; it had still many bills out against it, and in October 1814 Scott’s own sheriff-substitute, Charles Erskine, who had made it an advance, was asking for the repayment of his money. The natural way to clear its debts was to dispose of its mountainous dead stock, but Constable had already done all he intended in that matter. The result was that Guy Mannering went to Murray and Longman, who took over stock to the value of £500. But a large quantity remained, and meantime Scott had to pay the interest on the renewals of the bills. Constable published The Antiquary but took over no stock, and began to show himself disinclined to put his printing in the Ballantynes’ way, through exasperation with John’s tortuous methods. John was now very {154 comfortable in his business as auctioneer, drove tandem about Edinburgh in a blue coat and white cords, was a great figure at local race-meetings, and gave gay, Frenchified little dinners in his villa at Trinity, which he called ‘Harmony Hall.’ He acted as Scott’s agent, and a worse could not have been found, for he was tricky and disingenuous, and had no great desire to wind up the publishing concern, since its entanglements kept him closely in touch with Scott, the chief source of pride in his life. That business had never been solvent from the start, and its floating liabilities, which came wholly upon Scott, continued until its final liquidation in 1817, when the balance of indebtedness was still estimated at £10,000 — a debt which at that date was transferred to the printing firm.
[James and John]
As for the printing business it is not easy to decide whether it, too, at this point, was not bankrupt. It need not have been, for, as we have seen, its commitments were necessarily limited. In the later high tide of Scott’s productiveness it undoubtedly attained a certain degree of prosperity, owing to the large amount of safe printing orders which it received, but I am inclined to think that, at any time between its beginning in 1805 and the year 1816, an honest balance-sheet would have revealed it as insolvent. Scott does not appear to have drawn much from it, scarcely the interest on his invested capital, but James Ballantyne seems to have habitually anticipated what he believed to be the realizable profits, and this led to constant recourse to accommodation paper. When the publishing house was started the two concerns lent each other money, or rather backed each other’s bills, and so the finances were further complicated. In August 1813 the printing firm was clearly losing money, for we find Scott writing to John Ballantyne: “I cannot observe hitherto that the printing-office is paying off, but rather adding to its embarrassments — and it cannot be thought that I have either means or inclination to support a losing concern at the rate of £200 a month.” In October 1814 James Ballantyne writes: “I trust the printing will cease to be the burden which hitherto it has been.” The actual trading therefore seems to have been conducted at a loss, and the annual deficit was allowed to accumulate, since no member of the firm had any exact notion of the firm’s position. Scott had to intervene repeatedly and pay out of his own pocket some of the more pressing demands, but these payments never cleared his feet. Moreover, through John’s cleverness, the practice of double bills was largely used, under which, say, Ballantyne drew a bill on Constable which was accepted, and Constable drew a bill for the same amount, which was accepted by Ballantyne, and was held as cover in case the first bill should not be met. When a bill was discharged the covering bill was cancelled, but when a bill was renewed the cover was continued, and, in the event of a crisis, the debtor might find himself liable for the same sum twice over. In 1814 James Ballantyne had experienced the result of this practice, having to pay twice over a private bill for wine.
The position in 1816, therefore, was that the publishing business was suspended, but still burdened with bills and dead stock, while the printing business was carrying on, possibly at a profit in its actual trading, but at a heavy loss if its past liabilities were taken into reckoning. John Ballantyne was leading the life of a virtuoso and man of fashion, acting as Scott’s literary agent, for which he was well paid, and doing his best to embroil him with Constable. James, besides looking after the printing, was Scott’s amanuensis, private critic, and proof corrector, also for a handsome consideration. Both the brothers were expensive people and lived well; John was a provincial Lucullus, and at a later date we find James spending £100 on wine in three months.
In October 1815 James thought of taking to himself a wife. The lady was a Miss Hogarth, whose brother, knowing the earlier embarrassments of the firm, was not prepared to accept James as a suitor for his sister’s hand unless his position was made secure and he was freed from indefinite liabilities. Accordingly Scott agreed to become sole partner in the firm of James Ballantyne and Company, retaining James as his salaried servant at £400 a year. The debts of the publishing business were taken over by the printing-house, though a certain number of the accommodation bills due by it were left afloat in John’s name. James remained personally indebted to Scott in the sum of £3000, and the future printing profits which in view of the new novels might be considerable, were to be applied, after a fair remuneration to Scott for his advances, to the clearing off the old Ballantyne debts. The lady’s brother assented, and early in 1816 James was married.
