Читать книгу The Life of Sir Walter Scott: A Biography - S. Fowler Wright - Страница 19

CHAPTER XV.

It was in the course of 1796 that the five-years dream of marrying Williamina Stuart came to the end which mutual friends appear to have anticipated, though they were reluctant to express their doubts to the one who was most concerned, or found him unwilling to be convinced.

By this time he was doing considerable ill-paid work at the Bar—his fee-book for the previous year showed payments of £84. 4. 0d., a much more considerable sum then than it would be today—and he was busily occupied in the translation of German ballads, not yet published, but having some private circulation.

Two new friends come on the scene here—George Cranston (afterwards Lord Corehouse) and his sister Jane Anne (afterwards the Countess of Purgstall). Jane was in his confidence, and actively corresponding and intriguing on his behalf. It was she who wrote about this time, in the random course of a personal letter, “Upon my word, Walter Scott is going to turn out a poet—something of a cross, I think, between Burns and Gray”. It was a shrewd judgement on the material that she then had on which to form it. As a lyric poet, it probably defines what he became as accurately as a chapter of criticism would be likely to do.

When he went to Invermay early this April, Miss Cranston had an idea. She shared it with William Erskine, and together they had his translation of Leonore set up in type, and one beautifully-bound copy followed and surprised him a few days after he arrived at Williamina’s home.

Miss Cranston seems to have had some hope at the time that her little scheme had advanced his interests, but, in fact, it was a wasted effort. There may have been girls who would have considered the fact that a man could translate a German ballad a sufficient reason for marrying him, but Williamina thought differently. What her mother thought was revealed long after (when Williamina herself was dead and most of those who were busy now with intrigue and speculation concerning her) but she had the wisdom to let her make her own choice.

In the autumn, Scott was again at Invermay, and appears to have had a disappointing reception, for Miss Cranston writes to him, after he had left the house “—to trot quietly away, without so much as one stanza to Despair—never talk to me of love again—never, never, never...! Heaven speed you, and hope to the end.”

But Scott knew that the end had come. Early in October it was public knowledge that Miss Stuart was engaged to William Forbes, and that the marriage would promptly follow. His friends, by the evidence of correspondence that still remains, appear to have had some apprehension of the way in which he would take the shattering of his five-year dream. But they did not know him. He spent a few days riding in solitude in the Montrose district. He came back, seeming his usual self, and saying nothing to anyone. He was never one to expose his feelings lightly. But the wound remained unhealed to his life’s end. Characteristically, his friendship with his successful rival remained unbroken.

Lockhart professes to identify Miss Stuart both with Margaret of Branksome and Matilda of Rokeby. He may be right about one or other, but not both. Margaret had yellow hair, and there is evidence that Williamina (whom Lockhart calls Margaret, in evident error) had hair of the same colour. Beyond that, there is no description of Margaret’s appearance by which comparison can be made. As to character, all we are told of Margaret is that, at a time of acute grief, she neglected to dress properly, that she could rise early and tread lightly at the call of love, and that she bolted like a hare at the approach of danger to her lover’s life. Those who knew Williamina may have recognised her immediately from these incidents, but it seems unlikely.

Matilda was not physically heroic, but she lacked Margaret’s pleasantly putty-like qualities. She managed her two lovers with some adroitness, and she did manage to “seize upon their leader’s rein” and give the troopers commendably brief and accurate directions, which saved her lovers’ lives. Had Margaret been placed in Matilda’s situation we feel that the singing of

“Let our halls and towers decay”

would have lacked spirit.

There is some evidence that the plot of Rokeby was suggested by the triangle of Scott himself and Williamina and Willie Forbes; and Matilda may have been as like Williamina as he was like the consumptive Wilfred—which would not be much. But if we accept these comparisons, we must entirely acquit Miss Stuart of any measure of deceit or inconstancy. It is the central idea of Rokeby that love neither overcame honour nor destroyed friendship in those who were of sufficient nobility to equal the assault of circumstance.

Lockhart, with more reason, regards the following passage from the twelfth chapter of Peveril of the Peak as having been written with its author’s own experience in mind:

“The period at which love is formed for the first time, and felt most strongly, is seldom that at which there is much prospect of its being brought to a happy issue. The state of artificial society opposes many complicated obstructions to early marriages; and the chance is very great that such obstacles prove insurmountable. In fine, there are few men who do not look back in secret to some period of their youth, at which a sincere and early affection was repulsed, or betrayed, or became abortive from opposing circumstances.”

There is an interval of a quarter of a century, but the constancy and strength of Scott’s affections, and his enduring memory of this thwarted passion, make it almost impossible that he should have written such a paragraph without consciousness of his own experience.

Late in life, he said that he had never faced any serious trouble without being vexed in dreams by memories of this emotional disaster of earlier days. He also expressed a wish that its details should not be probed, though he feared that that was too much to hope. There is a border of decency in the investigation of the intimacies of those who are dead which it is easy to overpass, and which is passed very frequently. That they should be less protected than the living cannot be readily allowed by any logical or generous mind, and this applies more particularly to those who are related to, or who come into some contact with men of an enduring celebrity, but who have done nothing themselves to challenge publicity, or deserve its penalties. It is equally true that a biography which is insincere, or deceptive, is about as worthless, if not actively pernicious, as a book can be. Most biographies should not be written at all. The material does not exist, or cannot properly be brought into evidence. It is as though we were to stage a trial at which some essential witnesses would be absent, and the evidence of others would be abruptly terminated before its climax; at which no one could be cross-examined and no one would be on oath; and then bring in a casually-confident verdict, which a bench of experienced judges might decline to do.

Scott showed a truer sense of historical responsibility when he refused to write a life of Mary Stuart, at a time when money was a vital need, and though he must have known that it would have an enormous popularity, because he did not feel that he understood sufficiently the events of that gallant and tragic life. Possibly, had anyone suggested to his mind that the Casket letters were forgeries, he might have come to a different conclusion, and the result would have enriched our literature.

The character of most authors is sufficiently (and always most reliably) indicated by the work they leave us. The excuse (if it be needed) for considering the life of Scott is that which he would have applied himself to any theme that might come before him—that it is of an explicit nobility; a tale that it is worth while to tell.

The suggestion that he had a cause of grievance against Miss Stuart does not come from him, and there is no evidence to support it which endures critical examination.

It is her abiding honour that Walter Scott loved her with that quality of love which will survive hope, and which endured to his last hour, and we can be content to leave her name untarnished.

He was too great of soul to suppose that this love was inconsistent with that which made sunlight in his life for many after years: too great either to conceal it from Charlotte Charpentier, or any who had his confidence, or to make it cause of complaint, or excuse for bitterness. And it was not without its reward in the control and conduct of his own life. However we may estimate the extent or directions in which it impulsed his literary work, there can be no doubt that the thought of Williamina Stuart inspired his determination to enter the Faculty of Advocates within the minimum possible period, and that when he put aside a score of contending interests for the steady uncongenial study of those two strenuous years

“’Twas she for whose bright eyes was won

The listed field at Askalon.”