Читать книгу The Life of Sir Walter Scott: A Biography - S. Fowler Wright - Страница 12

CHAPTER VIII.

Although we may dissent from Scott’s modest estimate of his own scholarship, it is evident that he expressed genuine feelings of regret and deficiency in the quotations given in the previous chapter.

Even a century ago, the world of knowledge was not considered beyond the travelling capacity of a single mind. Either you had taken the grand tour of its dominions, or you had not. It was a question of fact, about which there could be no ambiguity. If you had, you were educated, even though you had forgotten half you had seen: otherwise you were not.

The same idea is still dominant in the practice of giving a University degree for a minimum proficiency in a group of subjects, instead of a certificate of proficiency for each or any. The most profound knowledge of ancient languages will not avail a man who declines or is unable to attain a set standard of mathematical ability. Nor will the most profound knowledge of mathematics be honoured in another, if he persists in disregarding all languages but his own.

These composite standards of judgement may be condemned as stupid and inequitable—as they are—but they are based upon the sound principle that we have not mastered any subject unless we understand it in its relations to others. We do not know a continent because we have separately explored its countries, unless we know their relations to one another, and where their boundaries meet. The effect of a furnished room is something more than the sum of the effect of its items of furniture; and if we are conversant with only half its contents, and regard them separately, no closeness of scrutiny will alter the fact that we are of an inferior knowledge to one who sees the whole, even though it be in a poor light.

We have warning examples of this result of specialisation today in men who have attained eminence in one branch of knowledge, and have then made public demonstration of some childish credulity by which they mislead the simple, who fail to see that their concentration upon physics or anthropology may have resulted in a peculiar ignorance of other subjects, and that a reputed proficiency in one branch of research does not demonstrate exceptional soundness of judgement, and may be consistent with an amazing absence of common-sense. So that wide publicity is given to authoritative nonsense such as that fishes do not learn from experience, that the ghost of Napoleon can be summoned by an illiterate medium to chatter “roses, roses all the way,” or (from a scientifically-omniscient bishop) that there was a recent period during which women commonly produced twelve children, of which only three survived. Such people, whatever their reputation or degrees, may properly be described as uneducated, not because they are ignorant, as we all are, but because they are unaware of their limitations.

To be truly educated—it is the most we can hope, and should be the least at which we should rest content—is to be aware of the nature and extent of the realms of knowledge which we do not explore, and to be prepared to enter them so far as time allows and occasion calls. All knowledge is then at our disposition, and may be used to good purpose so far as we have trained ourselves to the logic and toleration which are necessary to that end. To burden memory with endless accumulations of detail is as foolish as to endeavour to carry all our material possessions continually on our backs.

This was as true a century ago as it is today, and by such standard Walter Scott was far better educated than most of those whose claims he would have readily conceded to be superior. But he had no inclination to magnify his own attainments or creations, as men of less genius are apt to do. He looked high and far, seeing all that he was not, and could never be. Seeing himself as he was, he thanked God for a small thing. By his own vision he may have been right, but if we agree with him we convict ourselves....

Having entered his father’s office, he took on the work which it required with a conscientious diligence, which brought its own rewards. He hated the confinement, but on his own testimony, which certainly did not err in leniency of self-judgement, he was no ‘idle apprentice’. His statement on this point might be worth consideration by all who plead the “artistic temperament” as an excuse for inability to undertake their fair share of the prosaic work of the world, and those who condone the shallow egotism of such an attitude. “The drudgery of the office I disliked, and the confinement I altogether detested; but I loved my father, and I felt the rational pride and pleasure of rendering myself useful to him. I was ambitious, also; and among my companions in labour the only way to gratify ambition was to labour hard and well.”

He had his ultimate reward in becoming a more than competent lawyer: his immediate incentive in a system of copy-money which was the apprentices’ slender remuneration for the clerical work they undertook, and which enabled him, whose shillings had been infrequent and few, to indulge in an occasional visit to the theatre, or the acquisition of some otherwise inaccessible book. With such incentives, he remembered once fair-copying 120 folio pages without interval either for food or sleep....

We must not linger unduly over these years of legal apprenticeship, but there are a few recorded incidents which are of intrinsic interest, and illuminating quality.

It was about at this period that he met Robert Burns for the first time and the last, except for casual street-encounters when he was (quite naturally) not recognised by the older man. There is kindness and admiration in his memory of this event, and its cruelty is without intention. It was at Professor Fergusson’s, amid a group of several of those who were of literary reputation in Edinburgh at the moment, Dugald Stewart among them. It was Burns’ first visit to Edinburgh, and he was the centre of the gathering. He was shown a print of one of Bunbury’s pictures, with some lines of Langhorne’s (‘Cold on Canadian hills, or Minden’s plain’) beneath it. The sloppy sentimentality of the lines are rivalled by the bathos of the print. Dead soldier in snow—faithful dog howling beside him—widow also punctually present, with (need it be said?) a baby on her mourning breast. Burns ‘seemed much affected by the print. He actually shed tears.’ He wanted to know who wrote those pathetic lines about

“—her eye dissolved in dew,

The big drops mingling with the milk he drew.”

The literary gentlemen looked at each other, but were unable to supply the information. Scott, modestly in the background as became his youth, whispered Langhorne’s name to a bolder companion, who spoke it for him. Burns “rewarded me with a look and word which, though of mere civility, I then received, and still recollect, with very great pleasure”. It is a curious fact that Langhorne’s name was printed under the lines, but the eyes of all the company may have been blurred with tears.

Scott makes no criticism of Scotland’s national bard. He probably believed to his life’s end that he had stood in the presence of a greater man than himself. He says: “Among the men who were the most learned of their time and country, he” (Burns) “expressed himself with perfect firmness, but without the least intrusive forwardness; and when he differed in opinion he did not hesitate to express it firmly, yet at the same time with modesty.”

It is a good witness. But what judgement it is on the man that such testimony should be considered worth putting on record...!

Wishing to read the old French romances in the original, this boy of fourteen, who is so dissatisfied at his neglect of his early opportunities, had already mastered their language, and now, with the lure of Ariosto and Tasso—he had only seen the latter in the ‘flatness’ of Hoole’s translation, not, it seems, having encountered Fairfax’s livelier version, or the real poetry of Carey’s fragment—he determined to learn Italian. The cost of two evening classes a week became a first charge upon the shillings which his penmanship earned.

But in spite of the confinement of office hours, the learning of Italian, and his insatiable reading, his life at this time was far from sedentary. Lockhart hints that his fellow-apprentices were a rather boorish lot. He could not have known them, and there is some explicit contrary evidence. Scott’s special friend, both at High School and subsequently, John Irving, was certainly not of that description. The two boys lived near to one another, and had found a congenial fellowship from a very early age, taking Song walks together, and narrating romances to one another, which they composed in turns. It was an occupation kept secret to themselves, lest it should provoke ridicule, but Walter had discovered that his friend’s mother was a preserver of ancient ballads, both in her own head and their original printings, and Mrs. Irving was added to the list of those upon whom he made distraint to store the resources of his own mind.

As the years passed, and his strength grew, these walks increased in length, his eager vitality overcoming the reluctance of the shrunken leg, as it had done when he first crawled among the sheep in the heathered moorland of Sandy-Knowe.

It appears to have been at a later period of his fifteenth year—probably in the summer of 1786 that he was able to visit the Highlands for the first time. He went on the invitation of one of his father’s Highland clients—for the firm’s practice had spread far beyond the original relationships in the Lowland counties, an accession of business which may have originated with grandfather Robert’s cattle-dealing connections; and when we probe the origins of this invitation we come upon another of Walter’s childhood memories.

Alexander Stewart of Invernahyle was a Jacobite patriarch who had survived participations in the ’15 and ’45, and would visit Edinburgh in connection with various litigations which had superseded more primitive and congenial methods of settling differences with his Highland neighbours. Walter’s first memory of him was at the time when Edinburgh was expecting attack from that picturesque Yankee ‘pirate’, Paul Jones, and the ancient claymore-girded warrior was volunteering assistance in defence of his country’s capital. That was in September 1779. Alexander can scarcely have been under eighty, and Walter was just eight. The incident must have occurred at his father’s home or office, and Walter cannot have been at Sandy-Knowe or Prestonpans at that time.

Seven years later, Mr. Stewart still flourished, and his legal business still necessitated visits to his attorney at Edinburgh. Here he renewed acquaintance with the younger Walter, and joined the goodly company of those who had contributed to the wealth of legend and reminiscence which were being stored in the young law-student’s mind. Such conversations led to an invitation to visit the Highland chieftain in his own home, and so the first materials were made available for the future Waverley.

It was probably in the spring after this visit, or in the following year—the exact date is again in doubt—that Walter’s health broke down seriously. His own statement is that it had become ‘uncertain and delicate’ from rapid growth ‘and other causes’, and that a blood-vessel broke. The medical treatment which was considered suitable for his condition was of a drastic kind, with some surprising features, but it was justified by its results. He was bled and blistered ‘till he had scarcely a pulse left’. He was starved both of warmth and food. It was northern spring weather, cold and raw, but it was part of the remedial treatment that his bloodless body should shiver beneath a single blanket. He had a meagre diet of vegetables, which did little to satisfy a hunger which had become ravenous. He was not even allowed to talk. He might play chess and he might read.

He lay thus for several weeks. An arrangement of mirrors enabled him to watch troops exercising on the promenade. His own exercise was of the imagination only. He read military history, and set out its battles in childlike games with shells and pebbles and seeds, with toy cross-bows for artillery, and with a wooden fortress which a friendly carpenter—when was he ever to lack the friend of his need?—had helped him to model.

He says that he was afflicted at this time by a nervousness which he had never experienced before, and from which he never subsequently suffered. His inclination was to attribute this condition to the hated vegetables, which continued to be his sole diet during the convalescence of the following summer, though he is fair enough to say that it may very possibly have been the result of the disorder, and not of the cure.

Anyway, cured he was, and he recovered to a more robust and vigorous health than he had previously known. For the next thirty years he was clear of the doctors’ hands, and pains and remedies were alike forgotten.

During the remaining years of his apprenticeship he took much riding exercise. He rode well. He resumed and lengthened his pedestrian wanderings. He was not easily wearied, and the lame leg “disfigured rather than disabled” him in these activities.

Once he walked with three fellow-apprentices to breakfast at Prestonpans, spent the day in wandering among the Seton ruins and the adjoining battlefield, and back to Edinburgh in the evening (after a dinner of haddocks, and two bottles of port for the four) without any toll of fatigue for the thirty miles he had covered.

Such walks were frequent at that period, and though the half-bottles of port may have been less so, they also have their significance. Walter, like his father, was then, and at all times of life, of abstemious habits. But the word must be used comparatively. At the period, and among his own social order, the taking of large and steady quantities of alcohol was a routine, which on convivial occasions became a ritual also. To many of those who led robust open-air lives it appeared to do little harm till they approached or passed their fiftieth year, but during the following decade they aged very rapidly, and apoplexy, gout, and diseases of liver and kidneys, were almost as general among them as the indulgences from which they came. To those who had abandoned the healthier and more active country life for the occupations of the city courts, offices, colleges, and consulting-rooms, a companion habit of gluttony appears to have been regarded too-frequently as the natural condition of their later and more leisurely years. Of Scott’s three closest business associates, two became of such bulk in the days of their prosperity that their deaths were more probably hastened by their physical appetites than their business troubles.

Scott himself was too active in habits, as he was too strong in self-discipline, to surrender to such indulgences, and if he did so at times it was rather from the claims of good-fellowship than a physical craving. To suggest that at any period of his life he ate or drank excessively would be an overstatement which would have the effect of falsehood. Yet it is no more than he would have freely admitted to say that if he had drank less than he did he might have lived longer and died differently....

But this love of long rides and of wandering walks—mainly he says, for the delight he experienced in discoveries of romantic scenery—developed until they were protracted beyond the limits of single days, and his parents were first alarmed and then reconciled to his irregular absences. Remonstrance went no further than his father’s irritable remark that he must have been born to be a strolling pedlar, and the circumstance throws a kindly light upon the relations of parents and son, and the confidence that must have been felt that these all-night absences were not the indications of any serious escapade.

He set out on one occasion, not alone, but with a party of other lawyers-to-be, to fish the lake above Howgate. They got there in time for breakfast, fished all day, stayed the night, and started back early next morning. His constant friend, John Irving, was one of the party. General Abercromby’s son, George, was another. A third was William Clerk.

Pennycuik House, the residence of Sir John Clerk, lay a little off the track of their return. William Clerk took the opportunity of introducing his friends. They were warmly received, William Clerk and John Irving for themselves, “and I for their sakes,” as Scott modestly says. They were “overwhelmed with kindness” and persuaded to stay for a day or two. But the remainder of the party had gone on, without noticing those who had turned aside, and there was alarm at George’s Square that night, while Walter’s mind was obliviously occupied with the beauty of his surroundings, the “fine pictures” that the house contained, and the pleasant hospitality that he was experiencing.

William Clerk must have more than a passing reference, for he became an intimate and life-long friend. Scott’s own statement is that John Irving was his closest friend at this period. Lockhart puts Irving quietly aside, and installs Clerk in that position. Indeed, Lockhart will have it that Clerk was a guiding influence over a weaker man. The question of who was his closest friend is one on which Scott himself is the best authority. Whether he or Clerk would be likely to have the stronger influence on the other is a point of opinion which we must decide as we will, looking at the characters and records of the two men. Scott had a readiness to recognise the force of an opponent’s arguments, an unselfish generosity, a willingness to yield ground on nonessentials, that combined to give an impression of his being far more pliable than he really was.

But there was a difference between the social status of the two friends which could not fail to influence Lockhart’s mind, though its effect on that of Scott would have been nothing at all. Clerk was to become a barrister. Irving’s home was near that of the Scotts in George’s Square. He could not introduce his friends to a country seat with the dignity of Pennycuik House. Lockhart’s class-consciousness was constant and unashamed. When he met Constable he was moved to wonder that a bookseller could behave like a gentleman. He felt it natural, if not necessary, to record this astonishment, and the evidences on which he felt that Scott might be excused for such an association.

But we must not tip the scale to the other side. Scott’s friendship with William Clerk was a close one, which endured as the years passed. Clerk was one of those men who are content to be, rather than to do. Life came easily to him, and he ruled it with a negative wisdom, leaving a record without achievement, and free from folly. Scott said of him in later years that he was unsurpassed in strength and acuteness of faculties by any man he had conversed with familiarly. It is high praise, even from Scott, who praised generously, but not loosely. Clerk is (more or less) portrayed as the Darsie of Redgauntlet.

So much is true; but Lockhart’s suggestion that “it was Clerk who first or mainly awakened his social ambition: it was he that drew him out of the company of his father’s apprentices, and taught him to rise above their clubs and festivities, and the rough irregular habits of all their intervals of relaxation,” is simply silly.

It is needless to consider what ground, if any, Lockhart had for this general inditement of the office apprentices, because Scott had always shown an aptitude to chose congenial friends, and however sociable he might be with men of every type and class, he walked in his own ways. Indeed, in his whole account of this friendship, Lockhart shows a profound ignorance of Scott’s character, and his own unfitness to be his biographer. We owe much to Lockhart. He was a diligent collector of facts. He was an acute observer of the events that came under his own eyes in later years. But his witness cannot be trusted, even when his prejudices are not aroused, unless we are careful to distinguish between observations and deductions therefrom. There were sides of Scott’s character which he was unable to interpret because they were too alien from his own nature. He did not adequately interpret his romantic ideality, his love of jeopardy for its own sake, his essential democracy, because he did not understand them—and, had he done so, he would have felt that they were for excuse rather than admiration.