Andrew Lang: The Life and Letters of John Gibson Lockhart

No part of the Biography caused so much outcry as the references to the Ballantynes and to Constable. The representatives of John, and James his brother, protested in a tract or pamphlet: their tone was the reverse of conciliatory. Their case was taken up by the part of the press politically opposed to Scott, and “the isle was full of noises” such as often follow a successful biography. The example of Mr. Froude’s “Carlyle” is comparatively recent and familiar. To the representatives of Ballantyne,

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Lockhart replied in “The Ballantyne Humbug Handled”: his tone was not more to be commended than the taste, in a certain circumstance, of his opponents. They answered at great length, and with many tables of figures, and they were left “with the last word,” except so far as the “Life of Scott,” very slightly amended in the second and later editions, is the last and enduring word.

2. Lockhart maligned the Ballantynes by throwing on them the whole blame of Scott’s ruin.

One or two preliminary observations must be made. It was, as I have said, by no means Lockhart’s intention or aim to attribute Scott’s ruin to the Ballantynes. Their representatives made this general charge against Lockhart. His “one great object is to rivet on the public mind the impression that all the involvements, embarrassments, and misfortunes of his father-in-law were, in great measure, if not altogether, attributable to his choice of improper or worthless instruments.” Lockhart had no such object. With equal clearness of insight and delicacy of statement, he executed the painful task of tracing Sir Walter’s misfortunes to Sir Walter’s own errors of various kinds. The Ballantynes (undeniably “improper instruments” for Scott) aided and accelerated, but did not cause, the downfall. Lockhart’s intention and aim was to draw a thoroughly truthful picture of Sir Walter Scott. How entirely he succeeded, how boldly and

1 Lockhart introduced into his Second Edition (the edition of 1839, in ten volumes) such alterations as he deemed that the truth required. It is therefore on the basis of this edition (compared with the first, and with the edition abridged by Lockhart himself in 1848) that his treatment of the Ballantynes shall here be discussed, with as much brevity as may be consistent with the innumerable minute details of the controversy.

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fully, yet how delicately, as regards Scott, he told the truth, no one can know better than the present compiler, who has followed in his steps, and has handled many of the documents which he used.

The dispute between Lockhart and the representatives of the Ballantynes was, in essence, one of these hopeless controversies in which both parties are, to a considerable extent, practically saying the same thing. Thus the Ballantyne Trustees keep repeating, “Mr. Lockhart admits” this or that, whereas the so-called “admission” is really the essence of Lockhart’s case. Lockhart represents Sir Walter as originating the Printing Company, and also the Publishing Company, though he suspects John’s influence here. Lockhart shows how Sir Walter was a thoroughly incompetent publisher, selecting, for reasons unconnected with trade, books that were bound to fail. Lockhart dwells on Scott’s reckless purchases of land, even in his most pressing hours of early embarrassment. Lockhart insists on Sir Walter’s habit of living in fantasy, and what can be a more ruinous characteristic

1 The following note is borrowed from George Allan’s “Life of Scott,” Edinburgh, 1834, p. 470:—

“He remarked to Captain Basil Hall, on the eve of his departure for the Continent, in the autumn of 1831: ‘Ah, if I had been in our excellent friend Cadell’s hands during all the course of my writing for the public, I should now, undoubtedly, have been worth a couple of hundred thousand pounds, instead of having to work myself to pieces to get out of debt.’” Basil Hall tells the same story in one of his volumes of “Miscellanies.”

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in a man of business? Lockhart freely quotes (what he might, if uncandid, have suppressed) Sir Walter’s remark, that to him James Ballantyne owed “his difficulties as well as his advantages.” Thus Lockhart did not (as the partisans of the Ballantynes urge) hide Sir Walter’s own share in his own ruin: did not throw all the blame on the brothers. But to them he gave such share of the blame as he thought due. If he erred, he erred in company with and on the suggestion of the man who, of all others, ought best to have known the facts, namely, Mr. Cadell. Meanwhile, the Ballantyne Trustees attack Lockhart as if all his extremely frank statements about Scott’s share in his own ruin were reluctant, or heedlessly illogical admissions, made in a virulent campaign against James and John. This is the general effect of their first pamphlet, and this is what I mean when I describe the controversy as one in which, to a considerable extent, both parties are saying much the same thing.

Thus Lockhart displays Scott as the active person in the original weaving of the fatal web of credit: Ballantyne only acquiesces in “habitual deference to his opinion.” A correspondent cited in Mr. Murray’s “Memoirs”2 incidentally shows us a feast given on the enlargement of the printing works. “Everything good and abundant. White Hermitage the order of the day. What would your London printers say to this?” (July 14, 1807). Mr. Murray’s letters in 1809 prove that he regarded the business of the Ballantyne Press as wildly speculative.3 The truth was that Scott, having now quarrelled with Constable, was setting up a Ballantyne publishing house, with John Ballantyne, of all people, as manager. To John, Lockhart was “inclined to trace” (perhaps erroneously) a share in Scott’s alienation from Constable, “as well as most of my friend’s subsequent misadventures.”4

1 “Life,” ii. 235-237. 2 “Memoirs,” i. 86.

3 Ibid., i. 170-75. 4 “Life,” iii. 117.

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Lockhart now gives a sketch of John Ballantyne’s early career (on information from Mr. Cadell), which he modified in his Second Edition. John’s own Memorandum1 confesses that, from the year 1802, in Kelso, he “neglected business,” “neglected business every way,” “shot and hunted,” “got into difficulties”—finally (1805), “all consummated . . . my furniture, goods, &c, sold at Kelso, previous to my going to Edinburgh to become my brother’s clerk. . . . My effects at Kelso, with labour, paid my debts, and left me penniless.” “What a partner for the Great Minstrel!” writes Mr. Cadell, when he sends the Memorandum to Lockhart (Nov. 24, 1836).

Whether John had been a tailor or not (though Will Laidlaw remembered him in that capacity) is a matter of no importance. But it was of importance to show that, in this negligent, sporting, penniless ex-tradesman (tailor or not), there was no proper associate for Scott, and no promising manager of his publishing company—“at £300 a year, and one fourth of the profits besides.” Why did Scott select such an associate? There is the mystery, of which Lockhart gave his solution. In a veracious Life of Sir Walter these personal facts about John Ballantyne had to be taken into account. John was also dexterous at accounts pretty much as Sisyphus, according to Homer, “was of all men most skilled in the use of the oath.” John had been in Messrs.

1 First Edition, v. 77. Second Edition, vi. 330.

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Currie’s bank. This was denied; but Lockhart’s authority was Mr. Cadell, writing on May 27, 1836. Lockhart then draws sketches of the brothers in their habitual aspect and manners—sketches which were described by his adversaries as malevolent caricatures. Mr. Cadell, on the other hand, writes (July 20, 1836): “I absolutely wept with joy at the Rembrandt portraits of John and James. I think I see the strut of James, and the wriggle of John, and dark was the day which brought the last into council.”

This remark either suggested or was suggested by Lockhart’s observation, “They both loved and revered Scott, and I believe would have shed their hearts’ blood in his service; but they both, as men of affairs, deeply injured him; and, above all, the day that brought John into pecuniary connection with him was the blackest in his calendar. . . .”1 The Ballantynes, being the thirdsmen between Scott and Constable, were jealous of Constable, Lockhart thinks, and Constable of them, and this, he considers, was of ill effect on Sir Walter’s concerns.

The publishing affairs of “John Ballantyne and Co.” were never successful. Lockhart has explained, more than once, how Scott entered on enterprises interesting, if to any public, to a very small one; or dictated by desire to help poor authors. This system in itself meant ruin; nor

1 “Life,” iii. 121.

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were John and James in a position to remonstrate. The actual capital in ready money (except such debts as James could recover from his old Kelso business) was Scott’s. “My brother,” says James in his memoranda, “though an active and pushing, was not a cautious bookseller, and the large sums received never formed an addition to stock. In fact, they were all expended by the partners, who, being then young and sanguine men, not unwillingly adopted my brother’s hasty results.”

If this admission by James Ballantyne does not mean that Scott and James accepted John’s bookkeeping and accounts at a venture, and that all three “spent the results,” what does it mean? A curious example of the system, unknown to Lockhart, occurs in a letter of James Ballantyne to Constable.1 James begs for money or bills. Two years earlier, not foreseeing the “painful circumstances” of 1813, he had bought wine to the amount of £75—from an ironmonger! “About six months ago I gave him my bill, at six months, for the amount.” James “renewed” when the bill fell due, giving his acceptance in exchange. The ironmonger failed, “so that both sums, amounting to £150, are now due.”

By May 1813, thanks to the causes described, and “the rash adoption of some injudicious speculations of Mr. Scott’s,” the moneyed partner determined to dissolve the publishing concern. Constable rescued the partners, with the aid of the £4000 guaranteed to Scott by the Duke of Buccleuch. In a kindly letter of Scott’s to John Ballantyne, while complaining of “sudden, extensive, and unexpected embarrassments,” and a lack of “universal circumspection, and the courage to tell disagreeable truths,” on John’s part, he pronounces him an unrivalled “man of business” (May 18, 1813). Five days later he warns John against “shutting his eyes, or blinding those of his friends, upon the actual state of business.” James has been “steadily attentive,” but “one of you will need to be constantly in the printing-house henceforward.”1 So far, for about eight years, this elementary precaution had clearly been neglected.

This is frank enough, and not very consistent with the theory, that the Ballantynes are accused of ruining Scott. How much anxiety of the darkest kind John Ballantyne caused Sir Walter, by deferring to the last moment his announcements of debts to be paid; how Scott had to keep requesting him “to be a business-like correspondent”; how Ballantyne equivocated, how he did not write explicitly, how he never admitted the nearness of danger, “until it is almost unparriable,” Scott himself sets forth in letters to the culprit.2 Sir Walter deplores his “strange concealments”; he asks only for “a fair statement.”3

Constable was consulted in their difficulties, and suggested an appeal to a friendly capitalist. Scott obtained a guarantee for £4000 from the Duke of Buccleuch; yet even with this aid, and with Constable’s assistance, matters went badly. At Christmas 1814 there was trouble, and Scott “determined to break up, as soon as possible, the concern which his own sanguine rashness, and the gross irregularities of his mercurial lieutenant, had so lamentably perplexed.”1 Here, on Lockhart’s side, is a fair division of blame!

In the pressure, “Guy Mannering” was sold to Messrs. Longmans; and John Ballantyne, despite the debt of all partners to Constable, wished to offer the new edition of “Waverley” to a London publisher. Scott vetoed this “wretched expedient.”2 But Lockhart blames John Ballantyne for “prompting and enforcing the idea of trying other publishers from time to time, instead of adhering to Constable, merely for the selfish purposes—first, of facilitating the immediate discount of bills; secondly, of further perplexing Scott’s affairs, the entire disentanglement of which would have been, as he fancied, prejudicial to his own personal importance.”3

To end the financial history of John Ballantyne, he died in 1821, ignorant of the state of his affairs, and leaving to Scott £2000, which he did not possess.1 In his Memorandum he declares that the publishing business, when wound up in 1817, left Scott fully paid, with a balance of £1000. Lockhart says that, on the other hand, in 1817, John’s name was “on floating bills to the extent of at least £10,000, representing part of the debt which had been accumulated on the bookselling house, and which, on its dissolution, was assumed by the printing company in the Canongate.”2

In fact, they were in James Ballantyne’s case, when, in place of a debt of £75 for wine to an ironmonger, he managed, by dint of bills and similar accommodations, to owe £150!

“The bills also, I am in a position to show, were exclusively for Sir Walter’s accommodation, so that, as regards them, Mr. Ballantyne must have lost largely. The printing-house was thriving and had no need of them; and I have not the slightest doubt, when the books are balanced up to the bankruptcy of 1825-1826, that Mr. Ballantyne will be found to have been Sir Walter’s creditor to a considerable amount.”

Mr. Hughes goes on, in his note to Mr. Cadell, to discredit the story of Constable rushing to the money-changers with a “sheaf of counter-bills.” “Counters were regularly drawn for the primaries, the difference of interest calculated, and the counters as regularly discounted.” The authors of the pamphlet insist on this, and give a specimen, “which overthrows completely Mr. Lockhart’s theory of the bill transactions. . . . The bills were not in Constable’s desk. . . . The statement is either a creature of imagination only, or of abused credulity.”2

“John Ballantyne.—I felt diffident as to what I stated to you, when I was in town, as to the bill transactions resting on my unsupported authority. I have, since I returned, therefore, per favour of Constable’s trustees, got a sight of a huge batch of letters. I send for your inspection some forty or fifty; it will not take long to glance at them—a few bearing me out, and one or two to procure you a laugh after a hard day’s work. . . . I cannot at this distance call to mind the remedy for the slippery payments made for the bills for John’s use, which I appear to have suggested in October 1815.1 John suggested the double bills!!”

Lockhart especially refers to a letter of Mr. Cadell’s of October 1836,2 opening the topic in these words, “One thing Sir Walter never could have foreseen.” The point was “that, according to Constable’s partner, Scott could not have anticipated being called upon to discharge twice over the monies indicated by a certain large amount of bills drawn by James Ballantyne & Co.”3

“Curiously enough,” no trace of these labours to enlighten the dull intelligence of Lockhart remain in a correspondence which, though incomplete, everywhere shows Mr. Cadell supplying Lockhart with the facts about the Ballantynes, and nowhere shows him even hinting at any correction where they are concerned. “Curiously enough,” Mr. Cadell never contradicts or qualifies Lockhart’s assertion that the whole statement was made on his authority. Mr. Cadell, in fact, calls John Ballantyne “the origo mali,” and, as I have already said, as late as 1848, keeps throwing in new stories illustrative of John’s “picarooning” exploits, with an unpublished anecdote or two of James. One story, about the British Linen Company Bank, and some bills, is especially picaresque. Apart from questions of tone and style, then, it appears undeniable that Lockhart, in writing about the Ballantynes, worked throughout on the facts supplied, and in accordance with the advice given, by an adept in business, and an eye-witness of the transactions.

He appreciated Mr. Cadell’s sterling qualities; he relied on his information, and, whatever error may have come into his uses of that information, he did well in trusting to his informant. About the first Ballantyne pamphlet he writes, “It gives me no concern, because, as you know, I have spoken nothing but the truth about James Ballantyne, and never bore him the least ill-will, God knows.”

We have condensed the pages which contain the gist of Lockhart’s remarks, in the “Life,” on the Ballantynes. He also cites freely and fully from Sir Walter’s commendations of James, whom he had “tried to enrich,” whose “misfortunes and advantages,” he said, alike came from him. Sir Walter and his old companion never recriminated on each other, says Lockhart; but circumstances apart from money matters came between them at

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the close, in the twilight of two broken lives. That the Ballantynes were odd, incongruous associates for Sir Walter; that his whole unlucky relations with them were the result (as we have said) of a flaw in his noble nature; that had he dealt with men not his dependents and retainers, say with Mr. Cadell, it would have been better for him; that John “did something smack, a little grow to;” that James did not balance his books yearly—Lockhart may be said to have demonstrated. So far these men’s influence was ill for Scott; and Lockhart has made it conspicuous in every page, that Scott’s choice of such friends and such agents was his own fault. For the rest, some remarks might well have been spared; but a whole aspect of Scott, and a strange and potent influence in Scott’s history, would have been lost, had the portraits of the brethren as they lived been omitted. If the etching be deeply bitten, the acid, so to speak, had been gathering long. The Ballantynes were not, in obvious social ways, congenial to Lockhart’s taste; he believed that their society was rather unworthy of Sir Walter; and—supposing them to be accessories (not more) to Sir Walter’s ruin—he owed their memory little good-will. His own life had been embittered for many years by the collapse of 1826, and his temper had not been improved.

“The trustees and son” (a boy of sixteen) “of the late Mr. James Ballantyne” published their

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“Refutation of the Mis-statements and Calumnies” of Lockhart, in August 1838. With a taste which may be left to the judgment of the reader, they headed their work with a motto from the “Life,” Sir Walter’s dying words, “Lockhart, my dear, be a good man . . . !” They then decided that Lockhart had been a very bad man. His “attempts to exculpate his father-in-law from blame” are blended with “caricature portraits and degrading anecdotes. . . .” He “panders to that depraved taste which gloats,” and so forth: Mr. Carlyle’s reply may suffice. It is needless to remark that Lockhart never, for one moment, tries “to exculpate his father-in-law from blame.” Far from endeavouring “to aggrandise the character of Sir Walter by depreciating that of the Ballantynes,” Lockhart deliberately shows how Sir Walter lowered his own nature in the society of Rigdumfunnidos and the other. Lockhart’s imputations on the Ballantynes are, it is urged, “equally at variance with the evidence which he has himself produced, and with facts which, having access to them, he was bound to make himself master of. . . .”

Dropping John, the Ballantynes develop their own case. Sir Walter “was greatly benefited by his connection with the Ballantynes.” “His own large expenditure absorbed the whole profits of the printing establishment, and much more besides, involving the elder brother” (James) “in ruin, at a period of his life when, from the nature and extent of his business, he might otherwise have possessed a comfortable, if not an affluent independence.”

Mr. Morritt of Rokeby, writing to Lockhart after the publication of the Ballantyne pamphlet, says that these opinions prevail in canny Yorkshire. “This is plain common sense, and none of them cared much for the details, which I suppose nobody understands but the traders in bills.”1

The ruin came, say the Ballantyne Trustees, from Scott’s “extensive purchases of land before he had realised money to pay for it, and from his making a free use of the name of the Company (with the consent of his partner, of course) to meet the payments.” Certainly: Lockhart never conceals, nay he insists on, these ruinous purchases; but “the consent of the partner,” the fact that the partner, for years, was Scott’s salaried employee, and Scott’s error in having such a pliable partner, are all part of Lockhart’s case. Indeed, the Trustees keep quoting Lockhart’s statements about this matter against him, whereas they are a proof of his fairness.1 The more candid Lockhart is, the more he is blamed for inconsistency!

The strong and essential part of the Trustees’ case is that the accommodation bills, and other kites flown by the Company, were for Sir Walter’s private accommodation alone, not for the Company’s uses. True; but all the real bullion (beyond the Company’s earnings) was also Sir Walter’s own, payment for his novels and poems. “Except the means necessary to carry the business on, and Mr. James Ballantyne’s personal and family expenses, Sir Walter drew from it all its earnings, and more than all.” Mr. Ballantyne’s profits “were floating in the business at the command of Sir Walter Scott. . . . He had cast his bread upon the waters, but it did not return to him after many days of labour and sorrow. He lost all.”

At one time, in 1816-1822, it is not apparent to me that James had anything at all to lose. He was merely a salaried servant. “The labour and sorrow” of James, among the luxuries of his various abodes, his horses, his wines, and so forth, are not conspicuous. All these mortifications he owed to his connection with Scott, and, after the ruin, Scott resolutely declined, even to his own disadvantage, to let any of his copious printing work be given to any press but that of Ballantyne. “Cadell rather wished to rush it” (“The Tales of a Grandfather”) “out by employing three presses, but this I repressed. . . . I will not have poor James driven off the plank to which we are all three clinging. . . . I am happy enough to think that the plank is large enough to float us all.”1 Ballantyne, say his friends, “lived to repair his ruined fortune.” If he did, he had Scott to thank for it.

Lockhart’s repeated attestation of James’s honesty, and his own regret at the comments he has to make, is dismissed by his critics as “cant.”1 It is again alleged that Scott did know the amount of his liabilities—though how he could, without balance-sheets, is a mystery to myself. Moreover, the liabilities were personal in essence, not commercial. Scott’s own view, that James “owes his difficulties as well as his advantages to me; . . . I have been far from suffering by him,” is cited, from the “Life,” where Lockhart gave it every prominence. But Lockhart differed from Scott’s opinion; he believed that Scott did suffer from having Ballantyne as a partner—a partner whom, by his own fault, he had chosen.

The Trustees “notice Mr. Lockhart’s extraordinary assertion that Sir Walter never drew anything from the printing-house business.” They do not cite page and volume for this extraordinary assertion, which they ascribe “to ignorance,”2 and admit “in one sense to be true.”3 They also

1 “Refutation,” p. 33. 2 Ibid., p. 55. 3 Ibid., p. 27.

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contest, by passages from James Ballantyne’s diary, Lockhart’s suspicion that John Ballantyne fanned the feud (1808) between Scott and Constable. Constable’s own opinion about “the misrepresentations of interested persons,” and Scott’s denial that these caused his anger, may be found in the “Life.”1 The Trustees also contrast the tone of Lockhart’s letters to James Ballantyne before he wrote the “Life,” with his sarcasms in the “Life” itself.

To myself it seems that the Trustees err in exaggerating Lockhart’s theory of the injury received by Scott from the Ballantynes, and in exaggerating the injury done to the Ballantynes by Scott. To John no injury was done. That penniless sportsman lived, thanks to Scott, a life of affluence and enjoyment. James did the same, in his way, and, after a period of distress, retrieved his fortune, as he had made it and lost it, thanks to Scott. Lockhart’s theory of the injury done by the Ballantynes to Scott (as I understand it) has been already explained. That it is (as I comprehend it) correct, I do not doubt. But it may be said, Volenti non fit injuria.

In this controversy, the press, as a rule, took sides against Lockhart. Sir Walter had never loved press-men; never sought, as he says, to make “what are called literary acquaintances”; had even done his nature violence, by repressing

1 iii. 152, 153. I think there is a pretty obvious way of reconciling these contradictories.

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the impudent advances of at least one “able editor.” The Times and several other papers calmly remarked that Lockhart “attributed Sir Walter’s embarrassments wholly to the mismanagement of the Ballantynes”! This is the old favourite fallacy! Say that a man holds a position which he does not hold, then demolish it, and he is confuted. This argument is the unfailing resource of ignorance, carelessness, and spite; of course, it is usually successful with the public. The Trustees reprinted these mendacious statements of Lockhart’s position as a supplement to their pamphlet! Lockhart, of course, never took up for a moment the position assigned to him by the Times and its allies in the press: he had ascribed Scott’s ruin to Scott’s own failings, aggravated, in some degree, by the qualities of John Ballantyne, and by the very nature of James Ballantyne’s position, and his carelessness about balance-sheets.

This I take to be Lockhart’s argument in the “Life”; but, in his reply, through a very natural consequence of the logical fallacy employed by his opponents, he was almost irritated into defending, and believed that fresh documents entitled him to defend, something like the position which his adversaries had assigned to him.

Between Mr. Cadell and Lockhart, after the “Refutation” appeared in August 1838, a correspondence occurred. “The brochure” said Mr. Cadell (Aug. 18), “has the strongest display of

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bad spirit from the motto” (“Be a good man, my dear”) “to the end. But for Sir Walter Scott, what could James Ballantyne have done for himself? What could John? It was John’s concern that laid the foundation of all. His trash about £1000 over”—from the publishing business wound up in 1817—“was, like his £2000 legacy, paid by Sir Walter to the tune of above £400! . . . As to money made by James after 1826, who gave him the business to make it? Sir Walter Scott, who would not allow me to take a volume from him.”

On August 23, Mr. Cadell suggested that Lockhart should make no reply to the Ballantynes, except “in the new edition”—advice which could not be followed, for practical reasons. As to the marriage contract about Abbotsford, he “has not a scintilla of doubt as to Ballantyne’s knowledge” of it; and is “certain” that Constable also knew. Both men were concerned in raising £10,000 on Abbotsford, in December 1825—money hopelessly wasted.

On August 26, Mr. Cadell sent to Lockhart (who was at Milton Lockhart, and remote from his books and documents) a copy of his letter of October 1836, on the authority of which, and of documents sent by Mr. Cadell, Lockhart had written what he did write about the bills. “On reading what I said at the above date, and asking Bayley to come to me for the same purpose, we feel that you should give yourself not one moment’s uneasiness.” Mr. Cadell then makes statements, to the detriment of John and

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James, which, at this time of day, it seems needless to publish. He adds, “I retain my conviction that, in 1825-26, Sir Walter did not know the gross amount of his engagements.” He writes, but only with “almost” certainty, as to James’s knowledge of the marriage-contract about Abbotsford.

If Lockhart had, in Mr. Cadell’s opinion, made a gross bévue about the bills, here was the opportunity for reminding him of it. But Mr. Cadell obviously supports him, by reference to his own letter of October 1836.

I am not concerned to prove that Lockhart’s theory of the Ballantynes (especially in his reply to them) is correct. But as a man of letters, with no commercial training, obliged to write about complicated matters of finance, I do not think that Lockhart can reasonably be blamed for relying on the opinion of Mr. Cadell. He might, indeed, have distrusted Mr. Cadell’s possible “personal bias,” but how was he to make due allowance for that element in the affair? That he did, mentally, make such allowance is a fact. That most telling and serious story about John Ballantyne and the British Linen Bank, Lockhart did not use in his defence; possibly he found it to be erroneous, possibly he spared the memory of John.

On Oct. 31, Mr. Cadell announces that “Mr. Bayley” (the family agent) “has been greatly delighted with the hasty perusal we have given to John Ballantyne’s ‘states’; they more than bear

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out my long statement of October 1836. James was first in business by himself. In 1804 Sir Walter joined. James put into the concern types and presses, along with £1604 of debts; Sir Walter all the money—all which money James spent. . . . In a word, as my letter two years ago said, James began all the evil.”

On Nov. 8, Mr. Cadell writes in high spirits. He has “concluded his remarks on the entire pamphlet, and got nearly through a corresponding series of notes on the ‘Life’ in reference to the pamphlet. I had come to the same conclusion as the glorious letter of 1821 now before me, that Sir Walter was, ab initio, both James & Co. and John & Co.; but all is now settled to 1822, finished, concluded, and indeed the pamphlet answered to that date.

For these and other reasons, Mr. Cadell was eager that Lockhart should write a “Reply,” and backed his opinion by that of Mr. Bayley, Scott’s legal agent. He had sent “the 1821 letter” to Black, the publisher of the Ballantyne pamphlet. “He was in as great astonishment as I was in delight.” Mr. Cadell, in a postscript, again urges Lockhart to reply in a pamphlet, and not to notice the matter in the new edition of the “Life.” On November 10, Mr. Cadell writes that he has shown the letter of 1821 to Mr. John Gibson and his co-trustee, “who concur in declaring it conclusive.” “Where now is the call for any communication about the marriage-contract of January 1825? Ballantyne was, in fact, nobody in the concern. What of the money for Commissions” (Major Scott’s) “and Building? Sir Walter was only drawing on his own funds.” Mr. Cadell ends by suggesting that certain documents should be asked for, and that he should, perhaps, draw up a statement of figures.

On November 16, Mr. Cadell writes about the difficulty of getting the Ballantyne account-books for 1821-1826: “B. & Co. do not like to give them up, and offer to join for an accountant to go over them! We need no accountant!”

“On considering the whole question very maturely,”

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says Mr. Cadell, “I see no call for any lengthened examination of figures!” On November 20, Mr. Cadell had not yet obtained the Ballantyne account-books. On November 29, Mr. Cadell is yet more jubilant. James was really spared too much in the “Life”! The Ballantyne Trustees “are now funking. Mr. Bayley thinks there should be a consultation with them. Mr. Cadell is “against any treaty or compromise, or communing on mutual ground.” “I think you should act the Black Hussar on this occasion: neither give nor receive terms.”

On December 6, Mr. Cadell writes that he has got, and is examining, “part of the Ballantyne books; but much, very much is kept back. The Old Chief (Mr. Adam) is most violently against any treaty, after I read the letters to him. Oh, how he did hotch and laugh!”

By the kindness of the Dowager Lady Adam, I am permitted to make use of the letters of the venerable Chief Commissioner, Sir Walter’s great friend. He was now over eighty years of age, and blind, but the excellence of his heart, and the wonderful clearness of his statements, prove that his expressed distrust of his faculties was erroneous. This old friend of Sir Walter’s died in February 1839; hence it is probable that he never saw or never expressed an opinion on Lockhart’s reply to the Ballantynes. On December 10, he acknowledges, through an amanuensis, Lockhart’s “most kind and most judicious observations.”

On January 20, the Chief Commissioner sent a long letter on the point of an allegation about usurious interest received by Scott on loans to the firm, and cleared up that point. “I have conceived, in travelling on with you, in every step, an increasing and sincere interest in those uncommon qualities of head and heart, and of honourable feeling, which you have disclosed to me” (December 20, 1838). There could be no higher or better evidence as to Lockhart’s earnestness in this matter than that of Sir Walter’s old friend.

“I consider (and from that point I set out) that the missive of Sir Walter, dated 15th June 1821,
1 This document is in the possession of Mr. Cadell’s heirs, to whom I owe it.

166 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART.
and Ballantyne’s reply, establish unanswerably, that the pamphlet of the Ballantynes is a false representation throughout. It proceeds upon the assumption of making Sir Walter the debtor of Ballantyne, whereas it is quite clear, upon the deliberate admission of Ballantyne, that he was indebted to Sir Walter, and it does not appear that there ever was a period when Sir Walter was indebted to him. . . .”

Mr. Adam then examines the letters concerning James Ballantyne’s financial position at the time of his marriage (February 6, 1816), to this result:—

“It is established, by the deliberate written declarations and solemn acts of the parties, that Mr. Lockhart is perfectly correct in what he has asserted in the ‘Life,’ and that Mr. Cadell and Mr. Bayley were equally correct in the information with which they supplied him.

. . . . . .

“It is thus made to appear, by the most unerring evidence which human affairs afford, namely, the deliberate declarations of the parties in writing, and their acts in the most solemn contract which exists in the social intercourse of man, that the facts upon which the pamphlet is founded, and the calumnies contained in it, are unanswerably refuted, so that it is quite unnecessary to carry the matter further; but as it might be satisfactory in some views to do so, the period between 1809 and 1816 and between
LEGAL OPINIONS 167
1822 and 1826 may be looked into and the result reported.”

“Who will now deny,” writes Mr. Cadell, on January 30, 1840, “that Sir Walter was sole partner and sole prop of both concerns, and the sufferer, the real sufferer, by the extravagancies and mismanagement of both his allies? . . . Sir Walter Scott lost £20,000 by these concerns; pity it is he did not wipe it off from the produce of his wondrous writings, in place of allowing it to roll on in a huge sum, which was, in 1826, the means of overwhelming him.”

Here the letters of Mr. Cadell cease, that is, no more are apparently preserved, till we reach 1847.

The reader now understands the nature and authority of Lockhart’s “brief.” From the incompleteness of the correspondence, I was uncertain as to whether the whole material in Mr. Cadell’s and Lockhart’s hands was submitted for counsel’s opinion to an eminent advocate who is mentioned.

I am now informed by Mr. Bayley, Writer to the Signet, who has most kindly examined the books of his firm, that the documents submitted to the Chief Commissioner, with a brief by Mr. Cadell, “were on January 5, 1839, laid before Mr. Duncan M’Neill, advocate (afterwards Lord Colonsay), and that, as he was unable to undertake their consideration, they were sent to Mr. Patrick Robertson, advocate (afterwards Lord Robertson), and that he,
168 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART.
in consultation with Mr. Cadell and my father, (Mr. Bayley), revised Lockhart’s proposed Reply to the Ballantyne pamphlet. Mr. Robertson gave no written opinion; and the result of his being consulted was his revisal of Mr. Lockhart’s Reply.”1

Perhaps it is now sufficiently clear that, both in the “Life of Scott,” and, later, in his Reply to the first Ballantyne pamphlet, Lockhart did not write hastily, nor neglect due consultation with the best accessible authorities. To have established this fact suffices for my purpose. As late as 1851, Lockhart wrote, “The details of Scott’s commercial perplexities remain in great measure inexplicable.”2 Therefore I do not attempt to judge, in matters of detail, between Lockhart and the representatives of the Ballantynes. It is enough to demonstrate that Lockhart did his best to be accurate.

As a literary production his pamphlet may, undeniably, be censured for its taste.3 It is not the “dignified reply” desired by Mr. Cadell. In his Journal, Sir Walter Scott, amidst his distresses, exclaims, “I don’t care!” and avers that his temper is growing “savage,” and that he “stands at bay.” Constant misfortune and endless tracasseries had evidently a similar effect on Lockhart’s temper, at no time to be compared to Sir Walter’s. The pro-
1 Letter of Mr. Bayley, Edinburgh, March 25, 1896.
2 Quarterly Review, vol. lxxxviii. p. 199. “Life and Letters of Southey.”
3 “The Ballantyne Humbug Handled.” In a letter to Sir Adam Fergusson. Robert Cadell, Edinburgh, 1839.

MASSES OF FIGURES 169
vocations of the Ballantyne pamphlet, above all the motto, must be allowed for, and Lockhart, of course, believed to the fullest extent in his “brief.” The tone and taste of his Reply may thus be accounted for, though not vindicated. He swept away, with success, a cloud of petty imputations. For example, it was alleged that his friendly letters to James Ballantyne “must have been written at the very time when I was concocting my so-called ‘calumnies.’ I was not quite in such a hurry as to be ‘concocting’ a book about a friend and parent before he was cold in his grave.” It was several years later, when he had studied the affairs of the Ballantynes, that he changed his tone. This part of the Reply the Chief Commissioner had approved.

Into the financial part of Lockhart’s argument, and of the Ballantynes’ answer in a second pamphlet, it is impossible for me to enter. I have made, and abandoned, the attempt to elucidate masses of figures, charges, and counter-charges. The late Mr. Dykes Campbell, I am informed, spent a year on these affairs, with no apparent result. As to what James Ballantyne calls “the discreditable incident” of October 1816, adding, “I was not aware of the terrible consequences arising from one acting partner’s using the co-partnery signature for his personal purposes,” I cannot see that the Trustees make a satisfactory explanation.1 At the least they place James in the position of “an ignorant
1 “Ballantyne Humbug,” p. 59. Reply, pp. 103-105.

170 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART.
accountant,” as, by the Trustees’ showing, he frankly confessed himself to be.1 To accountants who are not ignorant the rest of this controversy must be left. Lockhart writes, “The whole import of my statement was, that, as a man of affairs, and as manager of the business, Ballantyne had injured Scott by his carelessness and inefficiency.” Ballantyne’s own letters confess ignorance, confess a beginning in business made “without capital.” Lockhart may have been wholly wrong as to the extent of Scott’s nescience about the bills, and on other points; he had only his brief to go upon. It would, perhaps, have been wiser to meet the Ballantyne Trustees, and discuss quietly their view of the matter; but Lockhart’s advisers discountenanced this course. He says, “I have all along considered myself as Sir Walter’s literary executor, and abstained, in general, from giving either advice or opinion as to any steps proposed or adopted in reference to any money matters of one sort or another.”2 It might have been well if the biographer could have abstained from discussion of money matters, no less than did the executor; but abstention was impossible.

The idea that Mr. Cadell should be the “respondent” was discountenanced by the Chief Commissioner. Lockhart merely acted as the mouthpiece of Mr. Cadell, and Mr. Bayley, the exponent of
1 Reply, p. 84.
2 “Ballantyne Humbug,” p. 117.

“THE DIRTY” 171
their views of the question. If his finance is wrong, that is a warning to men of letters against dabbling in figures, “states,” “calendars,” “bills,” “counterbills,” and the other mythology of commerce.

As to what Lockhart thought of the second Ballantyne pamphlet, the reply to his own, I have no evidence beyond what is contained in this letter to Mr. Andrew Shortrede, son of the Mr. Robert Shortrede who accompanied Scott in his raids into Liddesdale long ago:—

“Milton Lockhart,
Sept. 18, 1839.

“My dear Sir,— . . . I have hardly yet had leisure to read the new Ballantyne pamphlet, but I see the manufacturers are at their old tricks, mentioning the £1600 odd of book debts due to James Ballantyne when the firm was formed in 1805, whereas it was twice over stated by me distinctly in my pamphlet. They accuse me of omitting various balances, &c, and yet imply that the book they are drawn from was found by them since my pamphlet appeared. They refer to their appendix for a most important array of figures, &c.—the details of James’s expenditure—and behold the appendix hath not the document. But I am not sure that I shall think it worth while to meddle again with the Dirty and his associates.—Yours truly,

“J. G. Lockhart.”

Here the discussion of an affair often made
172 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART.
matter of reproach against Lockhart must end. I am content to give the sources of Lockhart’s “foul and elaborate misrepresentation of the Ballantynes.”1 If John was a vir pietate gravis, if James was a learned and sedulous accountant, then Lockhart “foully and elaborately misrepresented” the brothers.

1 Miss Martineau, “Biographical Sketches,” pp. 348, 349.

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Emily Elizabeth Adam [née Wyllie] (d. 1906) The daughter of Gen. Sir William Wyllie; in 1856 she married William Patrick Adam of Blair-Adam, son of Admiral Sir Charles Adam.

William Adam (1751-1839) Scottish barrister, Whig MP (1784-1812) and ally of Charles James Fox (whom he once wounded in a duel); he was privy councillor (1815) and a friend of Sir Walter Scott.

George Allan (1832 fl.) Not identified. Sir Walter Scott's first biographer completed a task begun by William Weir of the Glasgow Argus.

Hermione Ballantyne [née Parker] (d. 1857) The step-daughter of the schoolmaster William Rutherford of Uxbridge; in 1797 she married the publisher John Ballantyne.

James Ballantyne (1772-1833) Edinburgh printer in partnership with his younger brother John; the company failed in the financial collapse of 1826.

John Ballantyne (1774-1821) Edinburgh publisher and literary agent for Walter Scott; he was the younger brother of the printer James Ballantyne.

John Alexander Ballantyne (1816-1861) Son of the printer James Ballantyne.

Isaac Bayley (d. 1873) Edinburgh solicitor; he was the cousin and legal guardian of Jane Jobson, afterwards Lady Scott, and the nephew of Mrs. Adam Ferguson.

Adam Black (1784-1874) Edinburgh publisher and MP who purchased the Encyclopedia Britannica from Constable and later acquired the rights to the works of Walter Scott.

Elizabeth Cadell [née Constable] (d. 1818) The eldest daughter of Edinburgh publisher Archibald Constable; in 1817 she married the publisher Robert Cadell.

Robert Cadell (1788-1849) Edinburgh bookseller who partnered with Archibald Constable, whose daughter Elizabeth he married in 1817. After Constable's death and the failure of Ballantyne he joined with Scott to purchase rights to the Waverley Novels.

James Dykes Campbell (1838-1895) Scottish merchant, bibliophile, and biographer of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1893).

Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) Scottish essayist and man of letters; he translated Goethe's Wilhelm Meister (1824) and published Sartor Resartus (1833-34).

Archibald Constable (1774-1827) Edinburgh bookseller who published the Edinburgh Review and works of Sir Walter Scott; he went bankrupt in 1826.

Isaac Currie (1760-1843) London banker of Scottish descent who married Mary Anne Raikes, daughter of a prominent East India merchant.

James Anthony Froude (1818-1894) English historian and man of letters; he published History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth, 12 vols (1856-70).

John Gibson (1796-1877) Scottish Writer to the Signet and trustee of Sir Walter Scott's estate following the insolvency of 1826; he was Deputy-Keeper of the Great Seal (1853-58).

Captain Basil Hall (1788-1844) Scottish seaman and traveler; after education at Edinburgh high school he entered the Navy in 1802; he published Fragments of Voyages and Travels (1831-33) and other works.

Homer (850 BC fl.) Poet of the Iliad and Odyssey.

John Hughes (1838 fl.) Foreman printer and later partner in the Ballantyne firm; he was one of James Ballantyne's trustees.

Alexander Gibson Hunter (1771-1812) The eldest son of David Hunter, of Blackness; he was a Writer to the Signet (1797) who in 1804 became a partner of the Edinburgh bookseller Archibald Constable.

Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) English man of letters, among many other works he edited A Dictionary of the English Language (1755) and Shakespeare (1765), and wrote Lives of the Poets (1779-81).

William Laidlaw (1779-1845) The early friend of James Hogg and Sir Walter Scott's steward and amanuensis.

John Gibson Lockhart (1794-1854) Editor of the Quarterly Review (1825-1853); son-in-law of Walter Scott and author of the Life of Scott 5 vols (1838).

Thomas Norton Longman (1771-1842) A leading London publisher whose authors included Southey, Wordsworth, Scott, and Moore.

Duncan McNeill, Baron Colonsay and Oronsay (1793-1874) Son of John McNeill of Colonsay; educated at University of St Andrews and Edinburgh University, he was president of the Speculative Society and in 1834 was appointed solicitor-general for Scotland.

Alexander Maconochie-Welwood, Lord Meadowbank (1777-1861) The eldest son of Allan Maconochie (1748-1816); he was Lord Advocate (1816) and a Tory MP.

Harriet Martineau (1802-1876) English writer and reformer; she published Illustrations of Political Economy, 9 vols (1832-34) and Society in America (1837).

John Bacon Sawrey Morritt of Rokeby (1771-1843) Of Rokeby, classical scholar, close friend of Sir Walter Scott, and member of the Society of Dilettanti.

John Murray II (1778-1843) The second John Murray began the Quarterly Review in 1809 and published works by Scott, Byron, Austen, Crabbe, and other literary notables.

Rembrandt (1606-1669) Dutch painter and etcher.

Patrick Robertson [Peter] (1794-1855) Scottish judge, poet, wit, and friend of John Wilson; familiarly known as “Peter,” in 1848 he was elected lord rector of Marischal College.

Charles William Henry Montagu- Scott, fourth duke of Buccleuch (1772-1819) Son of the third duke and friend of Walter Scott; he was a Tory MP before succeeding to the title in 1812.

Sir Walter Scott, baronet (1771-1832) Scottish poet, novelist, antiquary, biographer, editor, and sheriff.

Sir Walter Scott, second baronet (1801-1847) The elder son and heir of Sir Walter Scott; he was cornet in the 18th Hussars (1816), captain (1825), lieut.-col. (1839). In the words of Maria Edgeworth, he was “excessively shy, very handsome, not at all literary.”

Andrew Shortreed (1805-1858) Son of Walter Scott's friend, Robert Shortreed; he was an Edinburgh printer who at one time worked for James Ballantyne.

Robert Shortreed (1762-1829) Sheriff-substitute of Roxburghshire; he was a ballad-collector and close friend of Sir Walter Scott.

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) Dean of St Patrick's, Scriblerian satirist, and author of Battle of the Books with Tale of a Tub (1704), Drapier Letters (1724), Gulliver's Travels (1726), and A Modest Proposal (1729).

The Kelso Mail and Border Gazette. (1797-). A Tory newspaper founded and edited by James Ballantyne in response to the Whig paper at Kelso, the British Chronicle: or Union Gazette. The proprietor was George Jerdan (d. 1849), brother of William Jerdan.

The Quarterly Review. (1809-1967). Published by John Murray, the Quarterly was instigated by Walter Scott as a Tory rival to the Edinburgh Review. It was edited by William Gifford to 1824, and by John Gibson Lockhart from 1826 to 1853.

The Times. (1785-). Founded by John Walter, The Times was edited by Thomas Barnes from 1817 to 1841. In the romantic era it published much less literary material than its rival dailies, the Morning Chronicle and the Morning Post.

George Allan (1832 fl.) Life of Sir Walter Scott, Baronet: with Critical Notices of his Writings. (Edinburgh: Thomas Ireland, 1834). The first biography; the preface explains that the author was completing a work begun by the Whig journalist William Weir (1802-58).

John Alexander Ballantyne (1816-1861) Refutation of the Mistatements and Calumnies contained in Mr Lockhart's Life of Sir Walter Scott, Bart.: respecting the Messrs Ballantyne. (London: Longman, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1838). “By the trustees and son of the late Mr James Ballantyne”—John Ballantyne, a boy at the time, was unlikely to have been the author.

John Alexander Ballantyne (1816-1861) Reply to Mr Lockhart's Pamphlet, entitled, “The Ballantyne-Humbug handled”. (London: Longman, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1839).

Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) “Memoirs of the Life of Scott” in Westminster Review. Vol. 28 (January 1838): 293-345. A review of John Gibson Lockhart's biography.

Thomas Constable (1812-1881) Archibald Constable and his Literary Correspondents. 3 vols (Edinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas, 1873). By the bookseller's son.

James Anthony Froude (1818-1894) Thomas Carlyle; a History of the first forty years of his Life, 1795-1835. 2 vols (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1882).

Captain Basil Hall (1788-1844) Fragments of Voyages and Travels: including Anecdotes of a Naval Life: chiefly for the use of Young Persons. 3 vols (Edinburgh: R. Cadell, 1831-1833). Three volumes in nine; several times reprinted.

John Gibson Lockhart (1794-1854) The Ballantyne-Humbug handled: in a Letter to Sir Adam Fergusson. (Edinburgh: Robert Cadell, 1839).

John Gibson Lockhart (1794-1854) Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, bart.. 7 vols (Edinburgh: R. Cadell, 1837-38).

Harriet Martineau (1802-1876) Biographical Sketches. (London: Macmillan and Co., 1869).

Sir Walter Scott, baronet (1771-1832) An Apology for Tales of Terror. 3 vols (Kelso: Mail Office, 1799). A collection of Scott's ballads printed for private distribution by James Ballantyne, printer of the Kelso Mail.

Sir Walter Scott, baronet (1771-1832) Guy Mannering, or, the Astrologer. 3 vols (Edinburgh: Ballantyne, 1815). The second of Scott's historical novels, published only a few months after Waverley.

Sir Walter Scott, baronet (1771-1832) Journal: from the original ms. at Abbotsford. 2 vols (Edinburgh: D. Douglas, 1890). Edited by David Douglas; extensive excerpts had been previously published in Lockhart's biography of Scott.

Sir Walter Scott, baronet (1771-1832) Tales of a Grandfather; being Stories taken from Scottish History. 3 vols (Edinburgh: Cadell and Co., 1828-1831). Written for juvenile readers; a fourth series was published in 1831.

Sir Walter Scott, baronet (1771-1832) Waverley: or, 'Tis Sixty Years Since. 3 vols (Edinburgh: Constable, 1814). Scott's first historical novel, set against the backdrop of the Jacobite rising of 1745.

Samuel Smiles (1812-1904) A Publisher and His Friends: Memoir and Correspondence of the late John Murray, with an Account of the Origin and Progress of the House, 1768-1843. 2 vols (London: John Murray, 1891).

Robert Southey (1774-1843) The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey. 6 vols (London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1849-1850). Edited by Charles Cuthbert Southey.

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Source Description:

Author: Lang, Andrew, 1844-1912

Title: The Life and Letters of John Gibson Lockhart (London: John C. Nimmo, 1897).

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Series: Lord Byron and his Times: http://lordbyron.org

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