Part 3

Scott's novels were literally poured out during fifteen wonderful years; and even then the broken man could still apply the whip to his exhausted and crippled brain. The popular success of the novels was unprecedented in the history of literature. It is estimated that Scott earned with his pen not less than three-quarters of a million dollars. The earlier stories were the best: "The Antiquary," "Old Mortality," "Rob Roy," "Heart of Midlothian," "Guy Mannering." These were followed by the series of semi-historical novels with their brilliant historical portraits: "Ivanhoe," the most popular though by no means the best of Scott's stories, "The Monastery," "The Abbot," "Kenilworth," "Quentin Durward," "The Bride of Lammermoor," "The Talisman."

The defects of these novels and those which came later have been clearly pointed out since the analytical novel and the novel of purpose have come into vogue. Scott did not command the constructive skill of even the second-rate novelist of today; he was often an awkward builder and clumsy in putting his materials together in a coherent whole; his style is often loose and diffuse; he dealt largely with the outside of the spectacle of living; his women have no magic of loveliness, no mystery of temperament, though they sometimes stand out with great distinctness; his heroes are rarely heroic, they are often commonplace.

Scott was the chronicler of feudalism, the primitive social order of the clan, of an aristocratic society. He was as little interested in Democracy as was Shakespeare; and largely for the same reason: his age was not anti-democratic, it had not reached the democratic stage. Bagehot, the famous English critic, put his limitations under two heads: he gives us the stir of the world but not its soul, and he leaves the abstract intellect unreported.

His vital interest in the moving spectacle of life has given us an almost unrivalled report of that world, and of a great group of men and women whose careers, as Scott reports them, have the reality of fact and the dramatic interest of fiction. Jeanie Deans, Madge Wildfire, Diana Vernon, Meg Merrilies, Wandering Willie, Andrew Fairservice, and a crowd of their companions, are more alive today, after a century has passed, than most of the people whose names are in the telephone directories.

Scott was a man of the kind men love to remember. His faults of nature are as obvious as his faults of art; but his splendid vitality makes them trivial. He was large hearted, frank, generous, honorable; he made life seem more noble by the richness of his nature and his splendid courage. His career was as romantic in achievement and vicissitude as his most striking novel. In 1826, when he was fifty-five years old, the two business houses in which he was a partner failed, with obligations amounting to nearly six hundred thousand dollars. Scott had recently spent large sums on the enlargement of Abbotsford, in settling his sons in life, and for other people; and he held the bills of Constable for four novels to be written in the future; the novels were written, but the bills were not honored. Four months after the failure Lady Scott died, and Scott's health was breaking. Two days after the failure he resumed work on "Woodstock," and set himself to pay the debt of half a million dollars. In two years he earned for his creditors nearly two hundred thousand dollars, the major part of which came from the sales of "Woodstock" and "The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte." If his brain had not given out he would have discharged the entire indebtedness in a few years. Working with a disabled brain but with heroic resolution, he wrote "Count Robert of Paris" and "Castle Dangerous." In five years more than three hundred thousand dollars had been paid; meantime he had had a stroke of paralysis. After a second stroke, when "Count Robert" was practically finished, the publishers objected to the work in the last volume. "The blow is a stunning one," wrote the broken man. "God knows I am at sea in the dark, and the vessel leaky.... I often wish I could lie down and sleep without waking. But I will fight it out if I can." And he fought it out; he died on July 12, 1832, and on February 21, 1833, the creditors were paid in full. Never was a heroic fight more nobly won.

On his death-bed Scott called his son-in-law Lockhart, who was to tell the story of his life in one of the great biographies, to his bedside. "I have but a minute to speak to you," he said. "My dear, be a good man.... Nothing else will give you any comfort when you come to lie here."

SUPPLEMENTARY READING

LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT (In "Everyman's Library") _By J. G. Lockhart_

SIR WALTER SCOTT _By R. H. Hutton_

SIR WALTER SCOTT _By William Winter_

Chapter in "Gray Days and Gold"

DICTIONARY OF THE CHARACTERS IN THE WAVERLEY NOVELS OF SIR WALTER SCOTT _By M. F. A. Husband_

SIR WALTER SCOTT STUDIED IN EIGHT NOVELS _By A. S. G. Channing_

THE SCOTT COUNTRY _By W. S. Crockett_

*** Information concerning the above books may be had on application to the Editor of The Mentor.

THE OPEN LETTER

What sort of a person was he; what did he look like--this Scottish bard, novelist, historian, essayist, and landed baronet?

"There he goes," said Dr. Maginn, a contemporary of Scott's, "sauntering about his grounds, with his Lowland bonnet in his hand, dressed in his old green shooting-jacket, telling stories of every stone and bush, and tree and stream in sight--tales of battles and raids--or ghosts and fairies, as the case may be, of the days of yore."

"Sauntering" is hardly the word with which to describe Scott's gait. "Limping" would be better, for he was lame from boyhood, and he supported himself in walking with a staff so heavy that it looked like a cudgel. Washington Irving visited Abbotsford in 1816, and described Scott as "limping up the gravel walk, aiding himself by a stout walking-stick, but moving rapidly and with vigor."

* * * * *

His lameness, was no serious handicap to Sir Walter. He was a man of extraordinary strength, six feet tall, and of a large and powerful frame, with great breadth across the chest. The muscles of his arms were like iron. He was an exceptional and powerful wielder of an ax, and could bring down a tree with the best of the younger men. He was a master of the horse, and a bold rider. He climbed the hills till he wearied all but his faithful dogs, and he was proficient in sport and hunting. The latter, however, he did not like. "I was never at ease," he said, "when I had knocked down my bird and, going to pick him up, he cast back his dying eye with a look of reproach. I am not ashamed to say that no practice ever reconciled me fully to the cruelty of the affair."

* * * * *

The conversation of Scott was frank, hearty, picturesque, and dramatic. He had a great sense of humor, and a rare gift for story telling. He was an accomplished mimic, and he lighted up his narratives and anecdotes with appropriate dialect and graphic description. And, as a near friend once observed, "The chief charm of his conversation, he being a man of such eminence, was its perfect simplicity and the entire absence of vanity and love of display."

* * * * *

He was a good listener, too--but he did not enjoy listening to classic music. He allowed that he "had a reasonable good ear for a jig," but confessed that "sonatas gave him the spleen." But he would rouse up at the sound of "The Blue Bells of Scotland" or "Bonnie Dundee," and his eye would flash an enthusiastic response to any song or verse that celebrated the romance, chivalry, and heroism of his native land.

* * * * *

Sir Walter was a strange combination of simplicity and strength. His personal appearance was strikingly odd. Once seen, he could never be forgotten. "Although forty-eight years have passed since I met him," wrote an acquaintance, "his personality is as present to me now as it was then in the flesh. His light blue waggish eye, sheltered, almost screened, by overhanging straw-colored bushy brows, his scanty, sandy-colored hair, the length of his upper lip, his towering forehead, his abrupt movements, and the mingled humor, urbanity and benevolence of his smile." His usual costume consisted of a green cutaway coat, with short skirts and brass buttons; drab trousers, vest and gaiters; a single seal and watch-key attached to a watered black ribbon dangling from his fob; a loose, soft linen collar; a black silk neckerchief; and a low-crowned, deep-brimmed hat.

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