Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Bart.
Sir Walter Scott to Joanna Baillie, 11 June 1821
“The immediate motive of my writing to you, my dearest
friend, is to make Mrs Agnes and you
aware that a Scots performer, called Mackay, is going up to London to play Bailie Nicol Jarvie for a single night at Covent Garden, and to
beg you of all dear loves to go and see him; for, taking him in that single
character, I am not sure I ever saw any thing in my life possessing so much
truth and comic effect at the same time: he is completely the personage of the
drama, the purse-proud consequential magistrate, humane and irritable in the
same moment, and the true Scotsman in every turn of thought and action: his
variety of feelings towards Rob Roy, whom
he likes, and fears, and despises, and admires, and pities all at once, is
exceedingly well expressed. In short, I never saw a part better sustained,
certainly; I pray you to collect a party of Scotch friends to see it. I have
written to Sotheby to the same purpose,
but I doubt whether the exhibition will prove as satisfactory to those who do
not know the original from which the resemblance is taken. I observe the
English demand (as is natural), broad caricature in the depicting of national
peculiarities: they did so as to the Irish till Jack Johnstone taught them better, and at first I should fear
Mackay’s reality will seem less ludicrous than
Liston’s humorous
extravagances. So let it not be said that a dramatic genius of Scotland wanted
the countenance and protection of Joanna
Baillie: the Doctor
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| 80 | LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. | |
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and Mrs Baillie will
be much diverted if they go also, but somebody said to me that they were out of
town. The man, I am told, is perfectly respectable in his life and habits, and
consequently deserves encouragement every way. There is a great difference
betwixt his bailie and all his other performances: one would think the part
made for him, and him for the part—and yet I may do the poor fellow injustice,
and what we here consider as a falling off may arise from our identifying
Mackay so completely with the worthy Glasgow
magistrate, that recollections of Nicol
Jarvie intrude upon us at every corner, and mar the
personification of any other part which he may represent for the time.
“I am here for a couple of days with our Chief
Commissioner, late Willie Adam, and we
had yesterday a delightful stroll to Castle Campbell, the Rumbling Brig,
Cauldron Linns, &c: the scenes are most romantic, and I know not by what
fatality it has been, that living within a step of them, I never visited any of
them before. We had Sir Samuel Shepherd
with us, a most delightful person, but with too much English fidgetiness about
him for crags and precipices,—perpetually afraid that rocks would give way
under his weight which had over-brow’d the torrent for ages, and that
good well-rooted trees, moored so as to resist ten thousand tempests, would
fall because he grasped one of their branches: he must certainly be a firm
believer in the simile of the lover of your native land, who complains—
‘I leant my back unto an aik, I thought it was a trusty tree, But first it bow’d and then it brake,’ &c. &c.
&c. |
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Certes these Southrons lack much the habits of the wood and wilderness,
for here is a man of taste and genius, a fine scholar and a most interesting
companion, haunted with fears that would be entertained by no shop-![]()
| LETTER TO JOANNA BAILLIE. | 81 |
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keeper from the Luckenbooths
or the Saut Market. A sort of Cockneyism of one kind or
another pervades their men of professional habits, whereas every Scotchman,
with very few exceptions, holds country exercises of all kinds to be part of
his nature, and is ready to become a traveller or even a soldier on the
slightest possible notice. The habits of the moorfowl shooting, salmon-fishing,
and so forth, may keep this much up among the gentry, a name which our pride
and pedigree extend so much wider than in England; and it is worth notice that
these amusements being cheap and tolerably easy come at by all the petty
dunnywassels, have a more general influence on the national character than
fox-hunting, which is confined to those who can mount and keep a horse worth at
least 100 guineas. But still this hardly explains the general and wide
difference betwixt the countries in this particular. Happen how it will, the
advantage is much in favour of Scotland: it is true that it contributes to
prevent our producing such very accomplished lawyers, divines, or artisans* as
when the whole mind is bent with undivided attention upon attaining one branch
of knowledge,—but it gives a strong and muscular character to the people in
general, and saves men from all sorts of causeless fears and flutterings of the
heart, which give quite as much misery as if there were real cause for en- * The great engineer, James
Watt of Birmingham in whose talk Scott took much delight—told him, that though hundreds
probably of his northern countrymen had sought employment at his
establishment, he never could get one of them to become a first rate
artisan. “Many of them,” said he, “were too
good for that, and rose to be valuable clerks and book-keepers; but
those incapable of this sort of advancement had always the same
insuperable aversion to toiling so long at any one point of
mechanism as to gain the highest wages among the
workmen.” I have no doubt Sir Walter was
thinking of Mr Watt’s remark when he wrote
the sentence in the text. |
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| 82 | LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. | |
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tertaining apprehension. This is not furiously to the
purpose of my letter, which, after recommending Monsieur Mackay, was to tell you that we are all well and
happy. Sophia is getting stout and
pretty, and is one of the wisest and most important little mammas that can be
seen any where. Her bower is bigged in gude green wood,
and we went last Saturday in a body to enjoy it, and to consult about
furniture, and we have got the road stopt which led up the hill, so it is now
quite solitary, and approached through a grove of trees, actual well grown
trees, not Lilliputian forests like those of Abbotsford. The season is
dreadfully backward. Our ashes and oaks are not yet in leaf, and will not be, I
think, in any thing like full foliage this year, such is the rigour of the east
winds. Always, my dear and much respected friend, most affectionately yours,
Blair-Adam, 11 June, 1821,
In full sight of Lochleven.
“P. S.—Pray read, or have read to you by Mrs Agnes, the Annals of the Parish. Mr Galt wrote the worst tragedies ever
seen, and has now written a most excellent novel, if it can be called
so.”
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.
Agnes Baillie (1760-1861)
The daughter of the Scottish cleric James Baillie and elder sister of the poet Joanna
Baillie with whom she lived in Hampstead for many decades.
Joanna Baillie (1762-1851)
Scottish poet and dramatist whose
Plays on the Passions
(1798-1812) were much admired, especially the gothic
De Montfort,
produced at Drury Lane in 1800.
Matthew Baillie (1761-1823)
Physician and brother of Joanna Baillie; as successor to the anatomist William Hunter he
treated the pedal deformities of both Walter Scott and Lord Byron.
Sophia Baillie [née Denman] (1771-1845)
The daughter of the obstetrician Thomas Denman and sister of Lord Denman; in 1791 she
married the physician Matthew Baillie, brother of Joanna Baillie.
John Galt (1779-1839)
Scottish novelist who met Byron during the first journey to Greece and was afterwards his
biographer; author of
Annals of the Parish (1821).
John Henry Johnstone (1749-1828)
Irish tenor and actor who performed at Smock Alley and Covent Garden.
John Liston (1776 c.-1846)
English comic actor who performed at the Haymarket and Covent Garden.
Charles Mackay (1787-1857)
Scottish actor who performed characters from Walter Scott's novels, notably Bailie Nichol
Jarvie.
Sir Samuel Shepherd (1760-1840)
English barrister educated at Merchant Taylors' School and the Inner Temple; he was
king's serjeant (1796), solicitor-general (1813), attorney-general (1817) and a friend of
Sir Walter Scott.
William Sotheby (1757-1833)
English man of letters; after Harrow he joined the dragoons, married well, and published
Poems (1790) and became a prolific poet and translator,
prominent in literary society.
James Watt (1736-1819)
Scottish inventor of the steam engine patented in 1769.
