PAGE 24
Fiction, Fair and Foul
by
In both of the Masters, it is always to be remembered that the evil and good are alike conditions of literal vision: and therefore also, inseparably connected with the state of the health. I believe the first elements of all Scott’s errors were in the milk of his consumptive nurse, which all but killed him as an infant, L. i. 19–and was without doubt the cause of the teething fever that ended in his lameness (L. i. 20). Then came (if the reader cares to know what I mean by Fors, let him read the page carefully) the fearful accidents to his only sister, and her death, L. i. 17; then the madness of his nurse, who planned his own murder (21), then the stories continually told him of the executions at Carlisle (24), his aunt’s husband having seen them; issuing, he himself scarcely knows how, in the unaccountable terror that came upon him at the sight of statuary, 31–especially Jacob’s ladder; then the murder of Mrs. Swinton, and finally the nearly fatal bursting of the blood vessel at Kelso, with the succeeding nervous illness, 65-67–solaced, while he was being ‘bled and blistered till he had scarcely a pulse left,’ by that history of the Knights of Malta–fondly dwelt on and realised by actual modelling of their fortress, which returned to his mind for the theme of its last effort in passing away.
[157] ‘Se dit par denigrement, d’un chretien qui ne croit pas les dogmes de sa religion.’–Fleming, vol. ii. p. 659.
[158] ‘A son nom,’ properly. The sentence is one of Victor Cherbuliez’s, in Prosper Randoce, which is full of other valuable ones. See the old nurse’s ‘ici bas les choses vont de travers, comme un chien qui va a vepres, p. 93; and compare Prosper’s treasures, ‘la petite Venus, et le petit Christ d’ivoire,’ p. 121; also Madame Brehanne’s request for the divertissement of ‘quelque belle batterie a coups de couteau’ with Didier’s answer. ‘Helas! madame, vous jouez de malheur, ici dans la Drome, l’on se massacre aussi peu que possible,’ p. 33.
[159] Edgeworth’s Tales (Hunter, 1827), ‘Harrington and Ormond,’ vol. iii. p. 260.
[160] Alice of Salisbury, Alice Lee, Alice Bridgnorth.
[161] Scott’s father was habitually ascetic. ‘I have heard his son tell that it was common with him, if any one observed that the soup was good, to taste it again, and say, “Yes–it is too good, bairns,” and dash a tumbler of cold water into his plate.’–Lockhart’s Life (Black, Edinburgh, 1869), vol. i. p. 312. In other places I refer to this book in the simple form of ‘L.’
[162] A young lady sang to me, just before I copied out this page for press, a Miss Somebody’s ‘great song,’ ‘Live, and Love, and Die.’ Had it been written for nothing better than silkworms, it should at least have added–Spin.
[163] See passage of introduction to Ivanhoe, wisely quoted in L. vi. 106.
[164] See below, note, p. 25, on the conclusion of Woodstock.
[165] L. iv. 177.
[166] L. vi. 67.
[167] ‘One other such novel, and there’s an end; but who can last for ever? who ever lasted so long?’–Sydney Smith (of the Pirate) to Jeffrey, December 30, 1821. (Letters, vol. ii. p. 223.)
[168] L. vi. p. 188. Compare the description of Fairy Dean, vii. 192.
[169] All, alas! were now in a great measure so written. Ivanhoe, The Monastery, The Abbot and Kenilworth were all published between December 1819 and January 1821, Constable & Co. giving five thousand guineas for the remaining copyright of them, Scott clearing ten thousand before the bargain was completed; and before the Fortunes of Nigel issued from the press Scott had exchanged instruments and received his bookseller’s bills for no less than four ‘works of fiction,’ not one of them otherwise described in the deeds of agreement, to be produced in unbroken succession, each of them to fill up at least three volumes, but with proper saving clauses as to increase of copy money in case any of them should run to four; and within two years all this anticipation had been wiped off by Peveril of the Peak, Quentin Durward, St. Ronan’s Well, and Redgauntlet.