Читать книгу The Life of Sir Walter Scott: A Biography - S. Fowler Wright - Страница 32

CHAPTER XXVIII.

It is the Sheriff’s Court at Selkirk. We have a glimpse of Scott sitting there in the local dignity of his magisterial office. A poacher is in the dock. He gives the name of Tom Purdie. The case is proved beyond cavil. He has, in fact, been convicted before. The Sheriff looks at him keenly. The Sheriff may be the most popular man in Selkirkshire, but those who come before him when he is on the bench do not always like the experience. “Anything to say, Purdie?”

It appears that the man has. Quite a lot. He is out of work. He has a family who need food. There are grouse on the moor.

The Sheriff listens, but is unmoved. He points out that it is not a first offence. It is a bad case, and poaching has got to stop. He imposes a heavy fine, with a jail sentence as an alternative. Tom Purdie has no money with which to pay fines. He goes from the dock to his own place.

But, in fact, Tom Purdie went home. When the Court rose he was told to do so. “Sherra,” they told him, had paid the fine.

So it might have ended, an incident of which no one would know today, had Tom Purdie been content that it should be left there. But he asked where the Sheriff could be found. He wished to thank him for that unexpected freedom.

But the Sheriff had left the town. He had gone home to the new house he had taken on the other side of the Tweed, three or four miles away. Tom set out to walk.

In the evening he came to Ashestiel. It was built in a woody place, a meadow’s breadth from the Tweed bank, with a little gorge at the side, where a mountain stream came downward to the wider riser. Behind, the hills rose, with Yarrow valley on their further side.

Tom had a talk with the Sheriff and went home to tell his wife that he had got a job.

Scott had added another—indeed several others—to the endless list of his life-long friends. We may think, as the years pass, that money will leave his hands rather freely at times, but he never made a better investment than when he paid a poacher’s fine.

How often he acted in the same spirit to others who faced him over a space of twenty-five years in the same dock, can be a matter of conjecture only, but there is a letter still in existence, casually discovered in 1928 by Mr. M. Kliman of Manchester, which deserves reproduction.

“George and John Brown—You have paid into my hands one guinea being the amount of a fine imposed on you by my sentence of that date for disorderly proceedings at Galashiels on the night of the eighth current, of which fine you are hereby discharged, and I shall transmit the same to the proper quarter.

Recommending to you over circumspection in future.

I am, etc.,

WALTER SCOTT.”

Abbotsford,

10th April.

The year is not inserted, and though there is a probability that it was written about 1824-5, there is no certain proof. Under what circumstances the two men came to send their fine to Abbotsford, instead of to the Court, can be a matter of conjecture only. It was not usual at that period to allow men convicted of disorderly conduct to go free with a fine unpaid. But if there had been any leniency in the treatment they had received, there is a cold warning in the communication which has neither the ordinary courtesies of a letter, nor the neutrality of an official receipt.

They may have had mercy now, but if they presume upon it—if they forget to be ‘over circumspect’ in future, they will be exceptionally foolish men....

We must not suppose that Scott invented work for Tom Purdie’s benefit. Tom had, in fact, called at a lucky time. There had been no regular outside staff at Lasswade, where the garden was small, and the land no more than two or three acres; of grass, on to which a horse could be turned at need. Ashestiel was a small farm. Tom was engaged as a shepherd at first, and was soon promoted to be in general charge of the place, taking a position which had been discussed for the Ettrick Shepherd. How James Hogg would have filled it may be difficult to imagine. Scott had a way of getting the best out of those he employed, and of controlling and reconciling difficult characters, either as guest or servant, but we may conclude that it was best as it was. It was a position of some responsibility, as house and farm would be left in Tom Purdie’s charge during the winter months. But we shall find that Scott made few mistakes in his judgements of men, which may be worth remembering when we come to James Ballantyne once again.

He found a job for Tom’s brother-in-law also, Peter Mathieson, about this time. Income has increased, and the larger house must be run on a larger scale. Charlotte wanted the dignity of a closed carriage, and that meant a coachman, for which Peter would do. The phaeton being an open vehicle, Scott had driven it himself. In fact, he had driven it where phaetons were not adapted to go. There had been more than one spill, in which Charlotte and he had been thrown out together. To overturn a phaeton, especially one that had been purchased on the specification sent to Richard Heber, does not sound easy to do. Lockhart attributes it to Scott’s “awkward management”, and hints that Mrs. Scott thought she would like a change in her charioteer. But to argue that is to ignore some known facts. That Scott drove a vehicle awkwardly is very improbable. But the phaeton had been intended to venture on the hill-tracks of Liddesdale, where no vehicle had ventured before. It may be believed that it had some spills. The closed carriage was not intended for such exploits, and would have rolled over with more disastrous frequency had they been foolish enough to test it. In fact, Lockhart attempts a comparison that does not arise. The closed carriage was to drive into Selkirk, with Mathieson on the box, in the state which a Sheriff’s wife may be expected to show. Scott preferred his own saddle, and his own horse.

But that there had been some perilous driving in the course of the Liddesdale raids may be believed without difficulty. They had definite destinations to reach, and they were attempting them in a new way. It was an adventurous enterprise. Scott, who knew the hills, may have been sanguine, and Charlotte, who didn’t, may have been trustful, when it was planned. Still, they came safely home. She could thank his driving for that.

That he would take risks for himself with a light heart is the testimony of many witnesses. Archibald Park, a neighbouring farmer, who was sheriff’s officer, used to ride with him much at this time in that capacity. He had the name of a good rider himself, but he used to exclaim at the way in which Scott took the chances that the rough country gave. He helped the Sheriff in the arrest of a gypsy who was wanted for murder, when they came on a gang of them in a lonely place, and Scott recognised the man and was determined to have him, as, in fact, they did.

Archibald’s brother, Mungo, knew Scott also, and also slept at Ashestiel just before the call of Africa took him back on that last journey from which he did not return. He was about to leave his family on a pretext of visiting Edinburgh, not having courage to tell them that he was leaving Scotland again, and (of course) Scott was the confidant to whom he disclosed his plans.... But the resolution to avoid mention of Scott’s friends, where they stand aside from the main course of the narrative, must be better kept, for it is an endless list....

Beside the farm at Ashestiel, Scott had undertaken the care of the plantations on the estate, not renting them, but supervising on his absent cousin’s behalf. The fact that his mind was turned upon this duty may have originated a remark in a letter to George Ellis about this time. The Ellises must have had a thought of visiting Scotland, and Scott is anxious that Mrs. Ellis should not expect too much of literal forest in the Ettrick valley. “Ettrick Forest,” he writes, “boasts finely shaped hills, and clear romantic streams; but, alas! they are bare to wildness, and denuded of the beautiful natural wood with which they were formerly shaded. It is mortifying to see that, though wherever the sheep are excluded the copse has immediately sprung up in abundance, so that enclosures only are wanted to restore the wood wherever it might be useful or ornamental, yet hardly a proprietor has attempted to give it fair play for a resurrection.”

From a quite different cause, there is a similar process of denudation on the moors of Yorkshire today, where the heather advances and the birch-woods dwindle, and it is equally disregarded. But we may conclude that if Scott shall come to the owning of land in the time to be, it will be a good day for the land.

In the autumn of this year, on a sudden impulse, born of James Ballantyne’s importunity, Scott ceased the alterations and additions to the Lay on which he had been engaged since he got settled at Ashestiel, and gave it to him to go to press. He could not foresee the success it would win, but he knew it to be a greater thing than the ballads with which he had gained the position he already held. For these years, while it had been taking gradual shape, he had felt like a general who sees the fight go well, but knows that his best troops are still held back in reserve. He may well look with confidence to the hour when they will sweep forward across a field which is already won.

It is an axiom of prosody that a long poem cannot sustain its highest notes either of emotional intensity or verbal melody. There must be flat stretches between the hills. The prosodic standard for the long poem differs from that of the lyric, and is, in some respects, lower. We do not look for continuous gold. If a line sparkle here and there, we have our reward: the gold flashes amid the quartz. But it is the distinctive quality of the Lay that the lyric level is sustained, in which respect it did not conform to the accepted standards, or limitations, of epic, narrative or lyric poetry. It was a new thing.

Its lyric qualities support the evidences of substance and construction to prove that it was not hastily written. James Skene, having no experience of the writing of poetry, might believe that two cantos were the work of as many idle days. But, if it were so, it was not an act of genius: it was an act of God.