ÆT. 55.]

IN PARIS AND LONDON.

389

superbly got up, with a crowd of soldiers, in helmets and hauberks of mail, instead of the little army of half a dozen ill-dressed "sticks" indigenous to the English and American stage. Charles X., whom Sir Walter had often seen in his exile when he lived in Holyrood House, gave him a few kind words en passant. Four years after, he was again an exile, and in Holyrood as before! Cooper, the American novelist, was one of Sir Walter's new acquaintances at Paris; but the two authors do not appear to have taken very kindly to each other. Scott also met his old friend William Robert Spencer, once the poet of fashion, rather than the fashionable poet, in London, crushed, like himself, by the panic of 1825, and living how he could in Paris, where he had once flourished almost en prince!

In this visit to Paris of seven or eight days, Sir Walter had little time or opportunity for collecting information. In London he was more fortunate; for he was shown the documents he required in the Colonial Office and the Admiralty. The Duke of Wellington presented him with "a bundle of remarks on Bonaparte's Russian campaign, written in * his carriage during his late mission to St. Petersburg, and furiously scrawled." Sir Walter gave his last sitting to Sir Thomas Lawrence for the portrait which George IV. placed in Windsor Castle. By the end of November, he was home to resume his official duties.

It being impossible to leave his daughter by herself at Abbotsford, she now lived with him in a furnished house in Walker Street which he had taken. In his tour, he had received rheumatism into his system from the dampness of French beds; his lameness, always aggravated by bodily ailment, had painfully increased; his daily exercise was gradually diminished to a walk to the Court of Session and

back; and hence the sluggishness of his circulation induced chilblains, which so much affected his fingers, that his writing became almost illegible. His Saturday visits to Abbotsford were nearly suspended: he could not spare the time. The year 1826, however, was welcomed out, if I so may say, in the stately hall which he had raised; and he saw a few friends, not in the old grand style, but with the old good welcome. Here too, not being able to proceed with his "Napoleon" for want of the numerous and bulky authorities, he paid up his arrears of correspondence. He could not keep up with the world, he said, "without shying a letter now and then."

No evil is without some alleviation; and this was Scott's experience now. He had no pecuniary provisions to embarrass him; he was freed from many public duties forced upon him as a man of consideration; and was relieved from the expense of a great hospitality, and the waste of time connected with it.

How hard he worked at this time may be judged from the fact, that he had written a volume of " Woodstock" in fifteen days, including attendance in court, and some days' idleness to let imagination brood on the task a little; and thought, that, for a bet, he could have done it in ten. "A volume at the cheapest," he calculated, "is worth a thousand pounds. This is working at the rate of twenty-four thousand pounds per annum." The day-dream of Alnaschar, in "The Arabian Nights," was akin to this.

Early in 1826, important debates took place in the British Parliament on the monetary system, or want of system, which had caused the panic of 1825; and the Government introduced a measure prohibiting any bank from issuing notes of less value than five pounds, and preventing private banks from issuing their own notes as money. This did not extend to Ireland. There arose in Scotland-where very little specie has

ÆT. 55.]

"MALACHI MALAGROWTHER."

391

at any time been in circulation, small notes being universally circulated — a general feeling of resistance, which might be called insurrectionary. On one hand, the banks saw a future diminution of business and profits; on the other, merchants and traders of all degrees saw a future of limited monetary accommodation. Sir Walter went to the rescue, and wrote three letters of "Malachi Malagrowther," first published in Ballantyne's paper, and then in a pamphlet by Blackwood. They expressed the unanimous feeling of Scotland, and were acutely and promptly answered by Mr. J. W. Croker, Secretary of the Admiralty, in the government organ in London. The end was, that the Scotch banks were not meddled with, and thereby a heavy blow at Scottish trade was warded off. Scotland acknowledged that it was her great master of fiction who had thus successfully arrayed facts, figures, and argument against an unwarrantable interference with the safe banking system under which her sons had so well thriven. Scotland, methinks, might then have done honor to herself by presenting her gifted son and champion with some substantial mark of gratitude.

CHAPTER XXIV.

Large Profits of Scott's Authorship.-Cost of Abbotsford.- Description of the Mansion. - Ancient Relics.- Portico. Hall, Drawing-Room. Dining Room, Armory. Library, Study, Breakfast-Parlor. - Portraits. Relics, and Curiosities.-Ways of the House.-Mr. Cadell clears off the Debts. — Present Ownership. - Miss Mary Morrice Hope-Scott. - Heir Presumptive.

THE

-

1826.

HE question may be asked, "By what enchantment did Walter Scott, born to no inheritance, and who all but failed in the profession to which he belonged, for his official appointinents came to him entirely through the favor and patronage of powerful friends,-purchase the land and build the mansion of Abbotsford?" Moore-who was always in difficulties, getting money in advance from his publishers, and more than once compelled to stay at a nobleman's house some days over the time he was invited for, because he had no cash to pay for the carriage which was to take him away-must have looked with admiration at "the outward and visible signs" of Scott's prosperity. His joint expenditure in Edinburgh and Abbotsford cannot have been less than ten thousand pounds a year. From his two public offices, and the interest upon property inherited by himself and wife (she had over twenty thousand pounds on the death of her brother in India), he had a large certain income, independent of the proceeds of his authorship.

Mr. William Howitt, an author who once was a

ÆT. 55.]

PROFITABLE AUTHORSHIP.

393

publisher, has calculated pretty closely the aggregate amount realized to Sir Walter Scott by his writings:

66

"He made about fifteen thousand pounds by his poetry; but by his prose he made by a single work his five thousand pounds, his ten thousand pounds, his twelve thousand pounds. His facility was equal to his success. It was no long and laborious task to complete one of these truly golden volumes: they were thrown off as fast as he could write; and, in three months, a novel worth eight or ten thousand pounds in the market was finished." The calculation by author and publishers was, that Scott cleared four hundred pounds by each thousand copies. Therefore, as there were fifty-one thousand copies of "Waverley" sold when Lockhart published the "Life" in 1836, this work alone produced twenty thousand pounds to the author; "Rob Roy" and Guy Mannering" being still more profitable. Sixtyfive thousand pounds by these three works alone! Then there were the "Napoleon; " twelve volumes of "Tales of a Grandfather," very popular, this epitome of Scottish history being a text-book in the Scottish schools; fifteen hundred pounds for a history of Scotland for Lardner's "Cabinet Cyclopædia; editions of Dryden and Swift; "Demonology and Witchcraft" for "The Family Library;" "Paul's Letters to his Kinsfolk;" three hundred pounds for three essays for "The Encyclopædia Britannica;" five hundred pounds for a semi-German drama written at the beginning of his career; one thousand pounds for a dramatic sketch written in two mornings; thirty-five articles for the "Edinburgh," "Quarterly," and "Foreign Quarterly" Reviews,-paid fifty pounds for each, at the lowest estimate. The amount actually received by Scott himself cannot have been less than two hundred and fifty thousand pounds.