Letters to Captain Basil Hall, R.N., from Sir Walter Scott and Charles Dickens.[34]

"My dear Captain Hall,

"I received with great pleasure your kind proposal to visit Tweedside. It arrived later than it should have done. I lose no time in saying that you and Mrs Hall cannot come but as welcome guests any day next week, which may best suit you. If you have time to drop a line we will make our dinner hour suit your arrival, but you cannot come amiss to us.

"I am infinitely obliged to you for Captain Maitland's plain, manly, and interesting narrative. It is very interesting, and clears Bonaparte of much egotism imputed to him. I am making a copy which, however, I will make no use of except as extracts, and am very much indebted to Captain Maitland for the privilege.

"Constable proposed a thing to me which was of so much delicacy that I scarce know how [sic] about it, and thought of leaving it till you and I met.

"It relates to that most interesting and affecting journal kept by my regretted and amiable friend, Mrs Hervey,[35] during poor De Lancey's illness. He thought with great truth that it would add very great interest as an addition to the letters which I wrote from Paris soon after Waterloo, and certainly I would consider it as one of the most valuable and important documents which could be published as illustrative of the woes of war. But whether this could be done without injury to the feelings of survivors is a question not for me to decide, and indeed I feel unaffected pain in even submitting it to your friendly ear who I know will put no harsh construction upon my motive which can be no other than such as would do honour to the amiable and lamented authoress. I never read anything which affected my own feelings more strongly or which I am sure would have a deeper interest on those of the public. Still the work is of a domestic nature, and its publication, however honourable to all concerned, might perhaps give pain when God knows I should be sorry any proposal of mine should awaken the distresses which time may have in some degree abated. You are the only person who can judge of this with any certainty or at least who can easily gain the means of ascertaining it, and as Constable seemed to think there was a possibility that after the lapse of so much time it might be regarded as matter of history and as a record of the amiable character of your accomplished sister, and seemed to suppose there was some probability of such a favour being granted, you will consider me as putting the question on his suggestion. It could be printed as the Journal of a lady during the last illness of a General Officer of distinction during her attendance upon his last illness, or something to that purpose. Perhaps it may be my own high admiration of the contents of this heartrending diary which makes me suppose a possibility that after such a lapse of years, the publication may possibly (as that which cannot but do the highest honour to the memory of the amiable authoress) may not be judged altogether inadmissible. You may and will, of course, act in this matter with your natural feeling of consideration, and ascertain whether that which cannot but do honour to the memory of those who are gone can be made public with the sacred regard due to the feelings of survivors.

"Lady Scott begs to add the pleasure she must have in seeing Mrs Hall and you at Abbotsford, and in speedy expectation of that honour I am always,

"Dear Sir,
"Most truly yours,
"Walter Scott.

"Abbotsford, 13th October 1825."

"Devonshire Terrace,
"Tuesday evening, 16th March 1841.

"My dear Hall,

"For I see it must be 'juniores priores,' and that I must demolish the ice at a blow.

"I have not had courage until last night to read Lady De Lancey's narrative, and, but for your letter, I should not have mastered it even then. One glance at it, when through your kindness it first arrived, had impressed me with a foreboding of its terrible truth, and I really have shrunk from it in pure lack of heart.

"After working at Barnaby all day, and wandering about the most wretched and distressful streets for a couple of hours in the evening—searching for some pictures I wanted to build upon—I went at it, at about ten o'clock. To say that the reading that most astonishing and tremendous account has constituted an epoch in my life—that I shall never forget the lightest word of it—that I cannot throw the impression aside, and never saw anything so real, so touching, and so actually present before my eyes, is nothing. I am husband and wife, dead man and living woman, Emma and General Dundas, doctor and bedstead—everything and everybody (but the Prussian officer—damn him) all in one. What I have always looked upon as masterpieces of powerful and affecting description, seem as nothing in my eyes. If I live for fifty years, I shall dream of it every now and then, from this hour to the day of my death, with the most frightful reality. The slightest mention of a battle will bring the whole thing before me. I shall never think of the Duke any more, but as he stood in his shirt with the officer in full-dress uniform, or as he dismounted from his horse when the gallant man was struck down.

"It is a striking proof of the power of that most extraordinary man Defoe that I seem to recognise in every line of the narrative something of him. Has this occurred to you? The going to Waterloo with that unconsciousness of everything in the road, but the obstacles to getting on—the shutting herself up in her room and determining not to hear—the not going to the door when the knocking came—the finding out by her wild spirits when she heard he was safe, how much she had feared when in doubt and anxiety—the desperate desire to move towards him—the whole description of the cottage, and its condition; and their daily shifts and contrivances; and the lying down beside him in the bed and both falling asleep; and his resolving not to serve any more, but to live quietly thenceforth; and her sorrow when she saw him eating with an appetite so soon before his death; and his death itself—all these are matters of truth, which only that astonishing creature, as I think, could have told in fiction.

"Of all the beautiful and tender passages—the thinking every day how happy and blest she was—the decorating him for the dinner—the standing in the balcony at night and seeing the troops melt away through the gate—and the rejoining him on his sick bed—I say not a word. They are God's own, and should be sacred. But let me say again, with an earnestness which pen and ink can no more convey than toast and water, in thanking you heartily for the perusal of this paper, that its impression on me can never be told; that the ground she travelled (which I know well) is holy ground to me from this day; and that please Heaven I will tread its every foot this very next summer, to have the softened recollection of this sad story on the very earth where it was acted.

"You won't smile at this, I know. When my enthusiasms are awakened by such things they don't wear out.

"Have you ever thought within yourself of that part where, having suffered so much by the news of his death, she will not believe he is alive? I should have supposed that unnatural if I had seen it in fiction.

"I shall never dismiss the subject from my mind, but with these hasty and very imperfect words I shall dismiss it from my paper, with two additional remarks—firstly, that Kate has been grievously putting me out by sobbing over it, while I have been writing this, and has just retired in an agony of grief; and, secondly, that if a time should ever come when you would not object to letting a friend copy it for himself, I hope you will bear me in your thoughts.

"It seems the poorest nonsense in the world to turn to anything else, that is, seems to me being fresher in respect of Lady De Lancey than you—but my raven's dead. He had been ailing for a few days but not seriously, as we thought, and was apparently recovering, when symptoms of relapse occasioned me to send for an eminent medical gentleman one Herring (a bird fancier in the New Road), who promptly attended and administered a powerful dose of castor oil. This was on Tuesday last. On Wednesday morning he had another dose of castor oil and a tea cup full of warm gruel, which he took with great relish and under the influence of which he so far recovered his spirits as to be enabled to bite the groom severely. At 12 o'clock at noon he took several turns up and down the stable with a grave, sedate air, and suddenly reeled. This made him thoughtful. He stopped directly, shook his head, moved on again, stopped once more, cried in a tone of remonstrance and considerable surprise, 'Halloa old girl!' and immediately died.

"He has left a rather large property (in cheese and halfpence) buried, for security's sake, in various parts of the garden. I am not without suspicions of poison. A butcher was heard to threaten him some weeks since, and he stole a clasp knife belonging to a vindictive carpenter, which was never found. For these reasons, I directed a post-mortem examination, preparatory to the body being stuffed; the result of it has not yet reached me. The medical gentleman broke out the fact of his decease to me with great delicacy, observing that 'the jolliest queer start had taken place with that 'ere knowing card of a bird, as ever he see'd'—but the shock was naturally very great. With reference to the jollity of the start, it appears that a raven dying at two hundred and fifty or thereabouts, is looked upon as an infant. This one would hardly, as I may say, have been born for a century or so to come, being only two or three years old.

"I want to know more about the promised 'tickler'—when it's to come, what it's to be, and in short all about it—that I may give it the better welcome. I don't know how it is, but I am celebrated either for writing no letters at all or for the briefest specimens of epistolary correspondence in existence, and here I am—in writing to you—on the sixth side! I won't make it a seventh anyway; so with love to all your home circle, and from all mine, I am now and always,

"Faithfully yours,

"Charles Dickens.

"I am glad you like Barnaby. I have great designs in store, but am sadly cramped at first for room."