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by Walter Scott
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In: Biographies·British Literature
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #14860.
The Journal of Sir Walter Scott is a personal diary drawn from the original manuscript kept at his Abbotsford estate. It opens on a brisk Christmas Day in 1826 with a whimsical, almost cryptic verse about a tailor, then moves into a candid entry that records his arrival at Abbotsford, the quiet of his halls, and a sudden bout of kidney pain that forces him to summon his physician, Clarkson. From there the journal follows a day‑by‑day rhythm of his life: the administration of calomel, bouts of writing and sketching, visits from friends such as Sir Adam Ferguson and George Thomson, and the practical concerns of debts, loans, and publishing contracts. The entries blend mundane details, shaving by a valet, a walk in the garden, a dinner with Lady Scott, with reflections on his health, his creative process, and the social obligations that shape his public‑career. The manuscript offers a window onto the writer’s inner world as he negotiates illness, financial strain, and the demands of literary production.
Scott’s voice is unmistakably that of a 19th‑century Scottish gentleman: erudite, self‑reflective, and peppered with Latin, French, and Scots idioms. His prose oscillates between the formal tone of a literary figure and the intimate chatter of a private notebook, revealing both his wit and his anxieties. Readers who enjoy immersive historical documents, especially those interested in the daily life of a major Romantic author, will find the journal rewarding. It appeals to scholars of Scottish literature, fans of diary literature, and anyone curious about the personal habits, health struggles, and social networks that underpinned the creation of the Waverley novels.
The opening · free to read
My God! what poor creatures we are! After all my fair proposals yesterday, I was seized with a most violent pain in the right kidney and parts adjacent, which, joined to deadly sickness which it brought on, forced me instantly to go to bed and send for Clarkson.[97] He came and inquired, pronouncing the complaint to be gravel augmented by bile. I was in great agony till about two o'clock, but awoke with the pain gone. I got up, had a fire in my dressing-closet, and had Dalgleish to shave me--two trifles, which I only mention, because they are contrary to my hardy and independent personal habits. But although a man cannot be a hero to his valet, his valet in sickness becomes of great use to him. I cannot expect that this first will be the last visit of this cruel complaint; but shall we receive good at the hand of God, and not receive evil?
December 27th.--Slept twelve hours at a stretch, being much exhausted. Totally without pain to-day, but uncomfortable from the effects of calomel, which, with me at least, is like the assistance of an auxiliary army, just one degree more tolerable than the enemy it chases away. Calomel contemplations are not worth recording. I wrote an introduction and a few notes to the Memoirs of Madame La Rochejacquelin,[98] being all that I was equal to.
Sir Adam Ferguson came over and tried to marry my verses to the tune of "Bonnie Dundee." They seem well adapted to each other. Dined with Lady Scott and Anne.
Worked at Pepys in the evening, with the purpose of review for Lockhart.[99] Notwithstanding the depressing effects of the calomel, I feel the pleasure of being alone and uninterrupted. Few men, leading a quiet life, and without any strong or highly varied change of circumstances, have seen more variety of society than I--few have enjoyed it more, or been bored, as it is called, less by the company of tiresome people. I have rarely, if ever, found any one, out of whom I could not extract amusement or edification; and were I obliged to account for hints afforded on such occasions, I should make an ample deduction from my inventive powers. Still, however, from the earliest time I can remember, I preferred the pleasure of being alone to waiting for visitors, and have often taken a bannock and a bit of cheese to the wood or hill, to avoid dining with company. As I grew from boyhood to manhood I saw this would not do; and that to gain a place in men's esteem I must mix and bustle with them. Pride and an excitation of spirits supplied the real pleasure which others seem to feel in society, and certainly upon many occasions it was real. Still, if the question was, eternal company, without the power of retiring within yourself, or solitary confinement for life, I should say, "Turnkey, lock the cell!" My life, though not without its fits of waking and strong exertion, has been a sort of dream, spent in
"Chewing the cud of sweet and bitter fancy."[100]
I have worn a wishing-cap, the power of which has been to divert present griefs by a touch of the wand of imagination, and gild over the future prospect by prospects more fair than can ever be realised. Somewhere it is said that this castle-building--this wielding of the aërial trowel--is fatal to exertions in actual life. I cannot tell, I have not found it so. I cannot, indeed, say like Madame Genlis, that in the imaginary scenes in which I have acted a part I ever prepared myself for anything which actually befell me; but I have certainly fashioned out much that made the present hour pass pleasantly away, and much that has enabled me to contribute to the amusement of the public. Since I was five years old I cannot remember the time when I had not some ideal part to play for my own solitary amusement.
December 28.--Somehow I think the attack on Christmas Day has been of a critical kind, and, having gone off so well, may be productive rather of health than continued indisposition. If one is to get a renewal of health in his fifty-fourth year, he must look to pay fine for it. Last night George Thomson[101] came to see how I was, poor fellow. He has talent, is well informed, and has an excellent heart; but there is an eccentricity about him that defies description. I wish to God I saw him provided in a country kirk. That, with a rational wife--that is, if there is such a thing to be gotten for him,--would, I think, bring him to a steady temper. At present he is between the tyning and the winning. If I could get him to set to any hard study, he would do something clever.
How to make a critic.--A sly rogue, sheltering himself under the generic name of Mr. Campbell, requested of me, through the penny-post, the loan of £50 for two years, having an impulse, as he said, to make this demand. As I felt no corresponding impulse, I begged to decline a demand which might have been as reasonably made by any Campbell on earth; and another impulse has determined the man of fifty pounds to send me anonymous abuse of my works and temper and selfish disposition. The severity of the joke lies in 14d. for postage, to avoid which his next epistle shall go back to the clerks of the Post Office, as not for S.W.S. How the severe rogue would be disappointed, if he knew I never looked at more than the first and last lines of his satirical effusion!
When I first saw that a literary profession was to be my fate, I endeavoured by all efforts of stoicism to divest myself of that irritable degree of sensibility--or, to speak plainly, of vanity--which makes the poetical race miserable and ridiculous. The anxiety of a poet for praise and for compliments I have always endeavoured [to keep down].
December 29.--Base feelings this same calomel gives one--mean, poor, and abject--a wretch, as Will Rose says:--
"Fie, fie, on silly coward man, That he should be the slave o't."[102]
Then it makes one "wofully dogged and snappish," as Dr. Rutty, the Quaker, says in his _Gurnal._[103]
Sent Lockhart four pages on Sheridan's plays; not very good, I think, but the demand came sudden. Must go to W----k![104] yet am vexed by that humour of contradiction which makes me incline to do anything else in preference. Commenced preface for new edition of my Novels. The city of Cork send my freedom in a silver box. I thought I was out of their grace for going to see Blarney rather than the Cove, for which I was attacked and defended in the papers when in Ireland. I am sure they are so civil that I would have gone wherever they wished me to go if I had had any one to have told me what I ought to be most inquisitive about.
"For if I should as lion come in strife Into such place, 't were pity of my life."[105]
December 30.--Spent at home and in labour--with the weight of unpleasant news from Edinburgh. J.B. is like to be pinched next week unless the loan can be brought forward. I must and have endeavoured to supply him. At present the result of my attempts is uncertain. I am even more anxious about C[onstable] & Co., unless they can get assistance from their London friends to whom they gave much. All is in God's hands. The worst can only be what I have before anticipated. But I must, I think, renounce the cigars. They brought back (using two this evening) the irritation of which I had no feelings while abstaining from them. Dined alone with Gordon,[106] Lady S., and Anne. James Curle, Melrose, has handsomely lent me £600; he has done kindly. I have served him before and will again if in my power.
December 31.--Took a good sharp walk the first time since my illness, and found myself the better in health and spirits. Being Hogmanay, there dined with us Colonel Russell and his sisters, Sir Adam Ferguson and Lady, Colonel Ferguson, with Mary and Margaret; an auld-warld party, who made themselves happy in the auld fashion. I felt so tired about eleven that I was forced to steal to bed.
[52] See ante, p. 12. Mr. James Ballantyne and Mr. Cadell concurred with Mr. Constable and Sir Walter in the propriety of assisting Robinson.
[53] Robert Pierce Gillies, once proprietor of a good estate in Kincardineshire, and member of the Scotch Bar. It is pleasant to find Mr. Gillies expressing his gratitude for what Sir Walter had done for him more than twenty-five years after this paragraph was written. "He was," says R.P.G., "not only among the earliest but most persevering of my friends--persevering in spite of my waywardness."--_Memoirs of a Literary Veteran_, including Sketches and Anecdotes of the most distinguished Literary Characters from 1794 to 1849 (3 vols., London, 1851), vol. i. p. 321. Mr. Gillies died in 1861.
[54] Mr. Gillies was, however, warmly welcomed by another publisher in Edinburgh, who paid him £100 for his bulky MSS., and issued the book in 1825 under the title of The Magic Ring, 3 vols. Its failure with the public prevented a repetition of the experiment!
[55] King Richard III., Act III. Sc. 7.--J.G.L.
[56] Of the many Edinburgh suppers of this period, commemorated by Lord Cockburn, not the least pleasant were the friendly gatherings in 30 Abercromby Place, the town house of Dr. James Russell, Professor of Clinical Surgery. They were given fortnightly after the meetings of the Royal Society during the Session, and are occasionally mentioned in the Journal. Dr. Russell died in 1836.
[57] Mr. Mackenzie had been consulting Sir Walter about collecting his own juvenile poetry.--J.G.L. Though the venerable author of The Man of Feeling did not die till 1831, he does not appear to have carried out his intention.
[58] Every alternate Wednesday during the Winter and Summer sessions, the Lords Commissioners of Teinds (Tithes), consisting of a certain number of the judges, held a "Teind Court"--for hearing cases relating to the secular affairs of the Church of Scotland. As the Teind Court has a separate establishment of clerks and officers, Sir Walter was freed from duty at the Parliament House on these days. The Court now sits on alternate Mondays only.
[59] Mr. Lockhart suggests Lords Hermand and Succoth, the former living at 124 George Street, and the latter at 1 Park Place.
[60] William Knox died 12th November. He had published Songs of Israel, 1824, A Visit to Dublin, 1824, The Harp of Zion, 1825, etc., besides The Lonely Hearth. His publisher (Mr. Anderson, junior, of Edinburgh) remembers that Sir Walter occasionally wrote to Knox and sent him money--£10 at a time.--J.G.L.
[61] In Ben Jonson's Every Man in his Humour.
[62] Providence was kinder to the venerable lady than the Government, as at this juncture a handsome legacy came to her from an unexpected quarter. Memoir and Correspondence, Lond. 1845, vol. iii. p. 71.
[63] Measure for Measure, Act iv. Sc. 3.--J.G.L.
[64] Burns's Dedication to Gavin Hamilton.--J.G.L.
[65] Don Quixote, Pt. II. ch. 23.
[66] Spectator, No. 159.--J.G.L.
[67] Sir William Allan, President of the Royal Scottish Academy from 1838: he died at Edinburgh in 1850.
[68] Beaumont and Fletcher, 8vo, Lond. 1788, vol. v. pp. 410-413,419-426.
[69] For notices of David Thomson, see Life, October 1822, and T. Craig Brown's History of Selkirkshire, 2 vols. 4to, Edin. 1886, vol. i. pp. 505, 507, and 519.
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