W. S. Crockett

LOCKHART AND ABBOTSFORD

John Gibson Lockhart, next to Boswell the greatest of British biographers, though Mr. Saintsbury is inclined to class him even above Boswell, was born in the manse of Cambusnethan, June 12, 1794.[20] He came of an ancestry of which he might well be proud. Some of the best blood of Scotland ran in his veins. Lockhart of Lee, in Lanarkshire, was probably the source of his family. The Lockharts had owned territory in the Upper Ward for centuries, Symington, or Symon's Town, famous now chiefly as a junction on the Caledonian Railway, being, perhaps, their earliest possession. The name is thought to be derived from Symon Locard, who founded its church and assumed lordship of the locality in the reign of Malcolm the Maiden. Lee itself may have been acquired about the close of the thirteenth century by William Locard, whose son, another Symon, was companion to 'the Good' Sir James Douglas on his hazardous mission with the heart of Bruce. Every schoolboy knows how Douglas fell on a blood-red field of Spain, how he flung the royal casket in front of him with the cry, 'Forward, brave heart, as thou wert wont; Douglas will follow thee or die,' and how Locard assumed the lead, rescued the King's heart and the body of his comrade, and, like a wise man, returned to Scotland. Bruce's heart he laid by the high altar at Melrose, the Douglas with his own dear dust in the Kirk of St. Bride, among the Lanarkshire uplands. It was this Symon who brought to Scotland the famous Lee Penny—Scott's 'Talisman,' the most celebrated charm in the country—a heart-shaped, dark-red stone now set in a groat of Edward IV., with a silver chain and ring attached, and long sought after by the superstitious as a positive cure for the worst ailments of man and beast.

Following Sir Symon Locard there comes on the scene Sir Stephen Lockhart,[21] as the name was now spelled, who held the lands of Cleghorn, in the same county. He was the direct male ancestor of John Gibson Lockhart, and almost certainly a cadet of the Lee family. His son, Allan Lockhart of Cleghorn, married for his second wife a daughter of the third Lord Somerville, by whom he had a son Stephen, Laird of Wicketshaw, also in Lanarkshire. In 1606 another Stephen, grandson of the latter, married Grizel Carmichael, a sister of the first Lord Carmichael, and by her he had three sons: William, heir to Wicketshaw; Robert of Birkhill, in the parish of Lesmahagow; and Walter of Kirkton. From the second of these, a noted Covenanter and leader of the Lanark Whigs at Bothwell, Scott's biographer had his immediate descent. William Lockhart, grandson of Robert of Birkhill, and his wife, Violet Inglis, of Corehouse, had two sons, the second of whom was the Rev. John Lockhart, D.D., minister of Cambusnethan, and for nearly half a century of the College Kirk, Glasgow. Dr. Lockhart was twice married, and it was his second wife, Elizabeth Gibson, daughter of the Rev. John Gibson, senior minister of St. Cuthbert's, Edinburgh, who became the mother of John Gibson Lockhart. Lockhart's ancestry on his mother's side connects him with James Nimmo the Covenanter, with the Erskines of Cardross, and the Pringles of Torwoodlee.

While the boy was still young his parents removed to Glasgow. There Lockhart matriculated, and blossomed into a scholar of brilliant parts, winning such academic blue ribbons as the Greek Blackstone and a Snell Exhibition, which took him to Oxford. He was at Balliol for some years, and left in 1813 with a 'first' in Classics. After a Continental visit (conversing with Goethe at Weimar), he studied law at Edinburgh, and in 1816 was called to the Scottish Bar. His Parliament House career came to a rather curious end, however. Speechifying was not in his line. He flustered and floundered upon every attempt, and was a complete failure. And he might have perambulated the boards of the Parliament Hall long enough. For, like Scott, 'deil a ane speered his price.' 'Gentlemen,' said he, in happy allusion to this infirmity on the occasion of a banquet in his honour long after he had relinquished the Bar, 'you know that if I could speak we would not be here.'[22]

It was in the realm of literature (more alluring than law) that Lockhart was fated to shine. Already he had shown talent in that direction in his 'Heraldry' article for Brewster's 'EncyclopÆdia,' and a translation of Schlegel's 'Lectures on the History of Literature.' And when Blackwood's Magazine soared into the arena (1817), Lockhart and John Wilson divided its chief honours. It was largely under Lockhart that 'Maga' made its position as the most pronounced Tory organ of the day. In his earlier career Lockhart adopted the slash-style of criticism (the tomahawk type)—incisive, irritating, and keenly offensive, as a rule. He was a master of satire, blazing away to his heart's content, with many to fear him, but none to stay his unsparing pen. If he could not speak, he could at least write to purpose and with effect. He had now come to his kingdom when the whole torrent of thought, imagination, and genius, which the Bar may have held in check, burst forth in its full brilliance. He was then barely five-and-twenty, and a handsomer fellow never stepped on shoe-leather—tall, with dark Italian-like features inherited from his mother, close, tight lips, a mobile chin, and temples clustering with huge masses of curly jet hair. There is an admirable pen-portrait of him in the 'Noctes' when Wilson makes the Shepherd say: 'Wasna't me that first prophesied his great abeelities when he was only an Oxford Collegian wi' a pale face and a black toozy head, but an e'e like an eagle's, an' a sort o' lauch about the screwed-up mouth o' him that fules ca'd no canny?'

Though Lockhart must have seen Scott frequently in public—in the Law Courts, the book-shops, and elsewhere—he does not appear to have met him in private society till the General Assembly of May, 1818. The incident of the 'hand,' some years previously, is so interesting, however, as not to be overlooked in any notice of Lockhart and Scott. Happening to pass through Edinburgh in June, 1814, Lockhart relates how, along with a band of budding barristers, he dined at a friend's house in George Street whose windows overlooked at right angles the back of Scott's town-house and study at 39, Castle Street. As the merry evening advanced, Lockhart observed a strange dulness settling over his friend's demeanour, and fear of his being unwell bade him put the question. 'No,' said he, 'I shall be well enough presently if you will only let me sit where you are, and take my chair; for there is a confounded hand in sight of me here which has often bothered me before, and now it won't let me fill my glass with a goodwill.' 'I rose to change places with him,' says Lockhart, 'and he pointed out to me this hand, which, like the writing on Belshazzar's wall, disturbed his hour of hilarity.' 'Since we sat down,' he said, 'I have been watching it; it fascinates my eye; it never stops; page after page is finished and thrown on that heap of manuscript, and still it goes on unwearied—and so it will be till candles are brought in, and God knows how long after that. It is the same every night; I can't stand a sight of it when I am not at my books.' 'Some stupid, dogged, engrossing clerk, probably,' exclaimed Lockhart, 'or some other giddy youth in the company.' 'No, boys,' said their host, 'I well know what hand it is—'tis Walter Scott's.' This was the hand which in the evenings of three summer weeks wrote the two last volumes of 'Waverley.' Lockhart was introduced to Scott at a society function in the house of Home Drummond, of Blair-Drummond, grandson of Lord Kames. 'Mr. Scott,' he says, 'ever apt to consider too favourably the literary efforts of others, and more especially of very young persons, received me, when I was presented to him, with a cordiality which I had not been prepared to expect from one filling a station so exalted. When the ladies retired from the dinner-table I happened to sit next him, and he, having heard that I had lately returned from a tour in Germany, made that country and its recent literature the subject of some conversation. He appeared particularly interested when I described Goethe as I first saw him alighting from a carriage crammed with wild plants and herbs which he had picked up in the course of his morning's botanizing among the hills above Jena.' 'I am glad,' said he, 'that my old master has pursuits somewhat akin to my own. I am no botanist, properly speaking; and though a dweller on the banks of the Tweed, shall never be knowing about Flora's beauties; but how I should like to have a talk with him about trees!'

A few days afterwards, on Scott's initiative, Lockhart was given the compilation of the historical part of the 'Edinburgh Annual Register,' worth £500 a year, plus daily intimacy with Scott—a lucky asset for one so young. Apparently, Scott had taken at once to the younger writer, then only half his age, and for the next fourteen years Lockhart was Scott's right-hand man. No more fortunate and happy relationship was ever formed. It was said of Sir Walter's own sons that they left little record behind them. They fell back into the common crowd, and perished in the direct line, leaving no children to carry on his name. But Lockhart was the son of his heart, his confidant and faithfullest friend through all the troubles that followed, and his children were the only heirs of Abbotsford and their great forebear's glory.

Of the Edinburgh life, the Castle Street domesticities, with Lockhart's picture of the 'den,' we are not now concerned. In October of that same year, 1818, along with Wilson, Lockhart saw Abbotsford for the first time. Scott was in high feather. The second of his building schemes had just been completed, and the famous tower, the cynosure of the edifice, was his main topic. When his guests rose from table, he was eager to take them all to the top for a moonlight view of the valley. Some—the more youthful members—assented, and Scott led the way up the narrow, dark stairs. 'Nothing could have been more lovely,' says Lockhart, 'than the panorama, all the harsher and more naked features being lost in the delicious moonlight; the Tweed and the Gala winding and sparkling beneath our feet; and the distant ruins of Melrose appearing as if carved of alabaster, under the black mass of the Eildons.' The poet, leaning on his battlement, seemed to hang over the beautiful vision as if he had never seen it before. 'If I live,' he exclaimed, 'I will build me a higher tower, with a more spacious platform, and a staircase better fitted for an old fellow's scrambling.' Then to John of Skye (John Bruce), whose pipes were heard retuning on the lawn beneath, he called for 'Lochaber no more,' and as the music rose, softened by the distance and the murmur of the river, Scott crooned what Lockhart calls the 'melancholy words of the song of exile.' In the new dining-room, unfinished, but brilliantly illuminated for the occasion, music and dance and whisky-punch passed the remainder of the evening, Scott and Dominie Thomson (a reputed original of Dominie Sampson) looking on with gladsome faces, and now and then beating time, the one with his staff, the other with his wooden leg. Lord Melville proposed 'good luck' to the 'roof-tree,' and the whole party, standing in a circle hand-in-hand, sang joyously:

'Weel may we a' be,
Ill may we never see,
God bless the King and the gude companie!'

Such was the 'handselling' of the 1818 Abbotsford.

193

THE EILDON HILLS AND RIVER TWEED

'Twilight, and Tweed, and Eildon Hill,
Fair and too fair you be;

You tell me that the voice is still
That should have welcomed me.'

Lockhart's next visit (with John Ballantyne), on April 10, 1819, found Scott still in the grip of his cramp enemy, and changed in appearance far beyond what Lockhart was led to expect. In the night he had a recurrence of his pains, and Lockhart, naturally, intended to leave next morning. But Scott, recovered, and wishful to 'drive away the accursed vapours of the laudanum I was obliged to swallow last night,' was bent on taking him 'for a good trot in the open air'—'up Yarrow'—the home phrase, none dearer.

Past Carterhaugh they rode, where the Forest waters meet, and where Janet rescued Tamlane from the fairies; Philiphaugh, Scott describing the battle as vividly as if he had witnessed it; Newark where the 'Lay' was chanted; and Slain Men's Lea, where the Covenanters butchered prisoners taken under promise of quarter (darkest memory of Philiphaugh). They saw Minchmoor, too, and recalled Montrose and his cavaliers scurrying Tweedwards. Next day they rode across Bowden Moor, and up the Ale Water to Lilliesleaf and 'ancient Riddell's fair domain,' Scott doing election business on the way. Next day, again, from the crest of the Eildons Lockhart was shown the 'Kingdom of Border Romance'—Eildon itself a not unfitting centre. Between the Lammermoors and the Cheviots on one side, and from the Merse to Moffatdale on the other, there is perhaps no range of landscape more intensely interesting from a literary point of view, and none in which Lockhart felt a more personal sympathy. Though not a Borderer (a measure of Border blood in his veins, however), the dearest ties of his life were destined to be with the Border; nor, so long as the English language lasts, will there be lacking generous hearts to love and remember the man who had Sir Walter for friend and hero. As to Irving, Scott pointed out to Lockhart the more notable landmarks of the locality and the places connected with his own career. Sandyknowe he saw, the home of Scott's boyhood; Earlston, where the Tower of the Rhymer recalled 'Sir Tristrem,' one of his early essays in literature; song-haunted Cowdenknowes; Bemersyde of the perennial Haigs, 'a wizard-spell hanging over it'; Mertoun, where he penned the 'Eve of St. John'; and Dryburgh,

'Where with chiming Tweed
The lintwhites sing in chorus';

and many another spot long famous in popular song and story. He repeated the lines (often on his lips)[23] ascribed to Burne the Violer, the last of the race of Border minstrels, and the prototype, doubtless, of his own 'Last Minstrel':

'Sing Ercildoune and Cowdenknowes,
Where Homes had ance commanding;

And Drygrange, wi' the milk-white yowes,
Twixt Tweed and Leader standing.

The bird that flees through Redpath trees
And Gladswood banks each morrow

May chant and sing sweet Leader Haughs,
And bonnie howms of Yarrow.

'But Minstrel Burne cannot assuage
His grief while life endureth,

To see the changes of this age
Which fleeting time procureth;

For mony a place stands in hard case,
Where blithe folks kent nae sorrow,

With Homes that dwelt on Leader side,
And Scotts that dwelt on Yarrow.'

Lockhart's 'Peter's Letters,'[24] published in 1819, contains, in some respects, an even better report of the Abbotsford pilgrimage than the Biography chapter. 'If I am very partial to the Doctor,' wrote Scott, acknowledging a gift of the book, 'remember I have been bribed by his kind and delicate account of his visit to Abbotsford.' Indeed, as Mr. Lang hints—and properly—had Lockhart never lived to write the Biography, Dr. Morris's description of Abbotsford would have remained the locus classicus.

Lockhart was not at Abbotsford again till the middle of February, 1820. He had not been idle, however. Of the charms of (Charlotte) Sophia, Scott's eldest daughter, and dearest, 'the flower and blossom of his house, and the likest of all his family to their father,' not much is said, of course, in the Biography. There is a pretty portrait of her at Abbotsford as a Norwegian peasant, with a great hound looking up into her face, in which it is not difficult to discern Sir Walter's lineaments. But she exhibited several of the Carpenter characteristics as well. Sophia was the singing member of the family. Scott insisted on his children being taught music, and Scottish music particularly; and the most delightful evenings of the Abbotsford life were spent in the Library listening to his daughter's rendering of the old ballads and songs, and snatches which he loved with all his heart and soul. Thus, no doubt, was the 'cold and unimpressionable and unconquerable' Lockhart pierced to the quick, notwithstanding a bravado determination 'to continue single.' It was an ideal love-match, one of the very fortunate (among many unfortunate) marriages of men of letters. 'Lockhart is Lockhart,' wrote Scott at a later period, 'to whom I can most willingly confide the happiness of the daughter who chose him and whom he has chosen.' They were married at Edinburgh (not at Abbotsford) April 29, 1820, by the incumbent of St. George's Episcopal Church (where, by the way, the Scotts worshipped), and took up house at Great King Street, afterwards removing to 25, Northumberland Street. Chiefswood, a snug little cottage on the Abbotsford property—'bigged in gude greenwood'—close to the Rhymer's Glen, within a mile and a half of the mansion-house, and bordering on Huntlyburn, became their summer residence. Though somewhat low-lying, a sweeter scene of seclusion could not be fancied,—even yet. Except for an extra gable, and one or two minor alterations, the place remains unchanged since the Lockharts' tenancy—their truly golden days. For never were they half so happy than here. Abbotsford was then at its acme—the Wizard at the height of his enchantment.

203

'Still, as I view each well-known scene,
Think what is now, and what hath been,
Seems as, to me, of all bereft,
Sole friends thy woods and streams were left;
And thus I love them better still—.'

Of Scott's fascination for Chiefswood, Lockhart has more than one familiar passage. He tells how with his own hands Scott planted creepers brought from the old cottage at Abbotsford around its little rustic porch, and how he was a constant visitor, glad to escape to its quiet retreat when the stir and strain of his own guest-crowded castle were too much for him. Here Scott penned large portions of the 'Pirate' (his writing-bureau may still be seen).[25] Under the great ash, flourishing yet, on the slope to the Rhymer's Glen, William Erskine (afterwards Lord Kinnedder), Scott's most intimate friend, read aloud chapter after chapter from the manuscript before the packet was sealed up for the printer; and here, too, some years later, when much of the gaiety and splendour of Abbotsford had vanished, little Johnnie Lockhart—'Hugh Littlejohn'—who, in a sense, had inspired them, listened to the first narration of those 'Tales of a Grandfather,' which, it is to be hoped, the children of Scotland have not left off studying. John Hugh Lockhart, 'the inheritor of so much genius and sorrow,' the boy who had Sir Walter to tell him stories, was a prime favourite with the Chiefswood circle; the centre of many of its happiest groups; his grandfather's companion in many rare plantation raids and riverside rambles. Born in Edinburgh in 1821, his days were few and evil, however. Smitten with spine disease, he was barely eleven when 'God's finger touched him, and he slept.' Seldom—hardly ever, indeed—does Lockhart unburden his own heart to the reader of the Biography. But there is one pathetic reverie of the Chiefswood days which cannot be passed over—when the crowning sorrow of his life had come, and he was left to bemoan her, 'next to Sir Walter himself, the chief ornament and delight at all those simple meetings, she to whose love I owed my own place in them—Scott's eldest daughter, the one of all his children who in countenance, mind, and manners most resembled himself, and who indeed was as like him in all things as a gentle, innocent woman can ever be to a great man deeply tried and skilled in the struggle and perplexities of active life—she, too, is no more. But enough—and more than I intended.'

In 1825 Lockhart left Chiefswood for London. A curious embassy from the house of Murray had surprised him in the autumn, in the person of young Benjamin Disraeli, then a mere tyro in literature. He came to enlist Lockhart's services for the Representative, a new daily which Murray had set his heart on establishing, and, in default of that, to offer him the editorship of the Quarterly Review. But to edit, or even to supervise, an ordinary newspaper, both Scott and Lockhart considered to be infra dig. There was no difficulty, however, in accepting the Quarterly appointment, at a salary which ran to four figures. For the next dozen years London was Lockhart's home. Chiefswood was occasionally let—as, for instance, to Thomas Hamilton, who wrote there his dashing military novel of 'Cyril Thornton.' But for all practical purposes it remained in Lockhart's hands, he and his family still spending some pleasant summers and autumns on Tweedside.

Of his last summer with Scott the Biography presents a full account. On April 22, 1831, learning of Sir Walter's third and more serious seizure, he sent down Mrs. Lockhart and the children, arriving himself on May 10. 'I found Sir Walter,' he says, 'to have rallied considerably, yet his appearance, as I saw him, was the most painful sight I had ever then seen. All his garments hung loose about him, his countenance was thin and haggard, and there was an obvious distortion in the muscles of one cheek. His look, however, was placid, his eye bright as ever. He smiled with the same affectionate gentleness, and though at first it was not easy to understand anything he said, he spoke cheerfully and manfully. 'Despite illness, he was fighting away at 'Count Robert.' He had planned 'Castle Dangerous,' too, and a 'raid' into Douglasdale. Autumn brought some slight rallies, when Abbotsford resumed something of its former brightness. Again, day about, they dined at Abbotsford and under the trees at Chiefswood. Once more they had the old excursions—to Oakwood and the Linns of Ettrick, and the twin peels of Sandyknowe and Bemersyde. Very near the end there came some unexpected things to cast a 'sunset brilliancy' over Abbotsford—the arrival of Major Scott ('a handsomer fellow never put foot into stirrup'), Captain Burns, son of the poet, and Wordsworth. Then Scott left for the Mediterranean, Lockhart's lines ringing in his ears:

'Heaven send the guardian Genius of the vale

Health yet, and strength, and length of honoured days,

To cheer the world with many a gallant tale,

And hear his children's children chant his lays.

'Through seas unruffled may the vessel glide,

That bears her Poet far from Melrose' glen!

And may his pulse be steadfast as our pride,

When happy breezes waft him back again!'

The rest of the story is well known. Lockhart did not see him for other eight months—October 23 to June 13—but after that, he was with Scott to the end. There is nothing more beautiful in the annals of literary friendship than Lockhart's unwearied solicitude for the dying Sir Walter. However cold, distant, unemotional, unknowable, the world may have judged him, here at any rate we see the real man. At bottom, and according to those who knew him most intimately, Lockhart was one of the best of men—a prince of good fellows in the truest sense—above all, though saying little about it, genuinely and reverently religious.

In the latter portion of his own life Lockhart was more or less a martyr to ill-health. For few men, too, were the fires of affliction more constantly burning. Friend after friend, on both sides of his house, passed from him. Worst loss of all, Mrs. Lockhart—his Charlotte—was taken, and then, on the wedding of his daughter, Lockhart was left a comparatively lonely man, with age creeping on him and many maladies, in a great empty house in London. He had many things to vex him, too, in the 'wild ways of a son whom he never ceased to love.' In 1847, for the funeral of the second Sir Walter, he was back at Abbotsford—the first time since Scott's death. 'Everything in perfect order,' he writes, 'every chair and table where it was then left, and I alone walk a ghost in a sepulchre amidst the scenes of all that ever made life worth the name for me.' During the occupancy of his son-in-law, however, he was often among the familiar scenes. In 1853 he resigned his editorship, and, like Scott, spent the following winter in Italy, returning in April. In August he was at Milton-Lockhart (where, by the way, much of the Biography had been written). By the end of September Abbotsford saw him once more, and for the last time. His books were brought down from London, and placed in the new drawing-room, where they still are. The cheerful breakfast-parlour, facing the Tweed and Yarrow—Scott's sanctum at one period—was fitted up as his bechamber, as the dining-room had been for Sir Walter. And there he remained until the end. 'He arrived at Abbotsford,' says Mr. Ornsby's 'Memoirs of James R. Hope Scott,' 'hardly able to get out of his carriage, and it was at once perceived that he was a dying man. He desired to drive about and take leave of various places'—Chiefswood, no doubt, Huntlyburn, Torwoodlee, Ashestiel perhaps, Gladswood, and Dryburgh—'displaying, however, a stoical fortitude, and never making a direct allusion to what was impending.... 'He would not suffer anyone to nurse him till, one night, he fell down on the floor, and after that, offered no further opposition. Father Lockhart, a distant cousin, was now telegraphed for, from whom, during his stay in Rome, he had received much kind attention, for which he was always grateful. He did not object to his kinsman's attendance, though a priest,[26] and yielded also when asked to allow his daughter to say a few prayers by his bedside. Mr. Hope Scott was absent on business, but returned home one or two days before the end, which came suddenly'—no pain, no struggle, but the falling into a soft sleep like that of a little child. The date was November 25, 1854. He died at the same age as Scott. As he desired, he was laid 'at the feet of Walter Scott,' within hearing of the Tweed. The funeral was 'strictly private.'

We have said that Lockhart was, at bottom, a religious man. In company with an Oxford friend (G. R. Gleig probably) Lockhart used to walk on Sunday afternoons in Regent's Park. 'With whatever topic their colloquy began, it invariably fell off, so to speak, of its own accord into discussions upon the character and teaching of the Saviour; upon the influence exercised by both over the opinions and habits of mankind; upon the light thrown by them on man's future state and present destiny. Lockhart was never so charming as in these discussions. It was evident that the subject filled his whole mind.' His verses on Immortality, first published in full in the Scotsman for 1863, have often been quoted. No poem probably, not even by Wordsworth or Tennyson, has done more to inspire and console the bereaved. Lockhart sent the poem (in part) to Carlyle, and 'the lines,' says Froude, 'were often on his lips to the end of his life, and will not be easily forgotten by anyone who reads them.'

'When youthful faith has fled,
Of loving take thy leave;

Be constant to the dead,
The dead cannot deceive.

'Sweet, modest flowers of spring.
How fleet your balmy day!

And man's brief year can bring
No secondary May.

'No earthly burst again
Of gladness out of gloom;

Fond hope and vision vain,
Ungrateful to the tomb!

'But 'tis an old belief,
That on some solemn shore,

Beyond the sphere of grief
Dear friends will meet once more.

'Beyond the sphere of time,
And sin, and fate's control,

Serene in changeless prime
Of body and of soul.

'That creed I fain would keep,
That hope I'll not forego:

Eternal be the sleep,
Unless to waken so!'

THE LATER ABBOTSFORD

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