been too customary to write of Charlotte Scott in a tone of disparagement, as though a prosaic marriage had followed flatly after a romantic love. But the evidence is overwhelmingly contrary to this ungenerous fiction.
It is obviously true that Charlotte could not have her husband’s interest in the antiquities of Scotland, or the rude spirit of its Border ballads. She was of another tradition, another race. Coming to Edinburgh, as she did, to live the life of his own people, she risked more, and surrendered more, than he had occasion to do.
It may have been a fact, when he waked her up during the night in the excitement of discovering the meaning of a burn’s name, that she failed to duplicate his own emotion; but the evidence that they were good comrades and devoted lovers to the hour of her distant death is both direct and indirect, and the indirect evidence is of the strongest kind.
It is a fact of the highest significance that, from the date of his marriage, Scott’s genius asserts itself in his verse as it had never done previously. The advance commences almost at once, and is continuous. There was promise before: there is to be performance now. Whatever other effects his marriage may have had, it did not stifle his ambition, nor divert his mind from his old pursuits, nor reduce the quality of his imaginative work.
During the five previous years, he had planned and dreamed and accumulated. Now plans became actions, dreams realities, the accumulations of yesterday were to be the building materials of tomorrow. Marriage brought happiness: it was also to bring success.
When they first came to Edinburgh, they went into a temporary lodging in George Street, the impetuosity of Scott’s assault upon the citadel of the position not having allowed sufficient time for the preparation of a home to which he could take his bride. Not that he had neglected this aspect of the enterprise he had undertaken. He had rented a little house in South Castle Street during the few weeks that he had been in Edinburgh, and some furnishing preparations had been made, but it was not ready for occupation—a circumstance about which Charlotte may have been well content. She had her own ideas as to what a home should be, which she might prefer to Walter’s, and certainly to that of the female members of his family, however kindly their help may have been given. The quickly-captured girl had shown some disposition to protest already against the strength and swiftness of the stream on which she was carried. ‘I will give you a little hint—that is, not to put so many musts in your letters—it is beginning rather too soon.’ So she wrote during those brief weeks of November separation. She may not have minded those musts very greatly, coming from him, but she would be less complaisant to the interference of others. By his evident unwillingness to take the risk of her meeting his family before the irrevocable ceremony, she was coming to a home that she had not seen. She must have been well content that the completion of its arrangements should be left to her.
Some of the means of its ultimate furnishing probably came from her own resources. It is certain that her money provided the larger and more certain part of the joint income on which their housekeeping was commenced, though it did not long continue to do so. There had been negotiations with London as well as Edinburgh, the success of which had been vital to the celerity of the impetuous marriage, in which Charlotte must have done her own part. But it is certain that Walter had substantial assistance at this time from his father’s purse, such as he might fairly expect to receive when once the main point had been conceded. John was not living on his regimental pay. No officers did at that period. He must have drawn on his father with regularity. Tom had an income from the business. He was already married. He had not furnished his home from the savings of his apprentice years. Walter had remained at home. He had lived without cost to himself. His legal fees had been for his own pocket. All his life he was without personal extravagances. But his income had not been sufficient to allow of saving, except for immediate objects. Three or four years ago he had written to Shortreed that he was saving fees so that he could have his next Liddesdale holiday on the back of his own horse, instead of having to borrow from a friend in Jedburgh, as he had done previously. In the spring of this year, he had considered the sale of his precious collection of coins when he had been in difficulty for the price of a military charger.
But his father had substantial resources in these days, and for some help he could fairly look. Nor can we doubt that it was readily given. Love and pride would unite to see that, in the carefully-worded phrase with which he had opened the negotiations, the conditions to which he should introduce his wife should be “neither extravagant or degrading”.
It says much for Charlotte that she succeeded in conforming to the customs and prejudices of the strange city into which she had come sufficiently to establish friendly, if not intimate associations with her new relatives. There must have been forbearances on both sides. Lockhart says quaintly that she had “some little leaning to the pomps and vanities of the world,” but she “made up her mind to find her happiness in better things.” It is unlikely that either she or Walter would have described the position quite in that way. She had been used to spending her money more freely than she could now afford to do, and she showed the practical sense and economy of her own nation in her control of expenditure in the new circumstances of her life. Frugal, critical Scottish eyes watched, and approved.
When they were able to move from the George Street lodging, and she became the mistress of her own home, she scandalised Edinburgh by living in the drawing-room, which should only have been entered (except to dust it) on Sunday afternoons, and some occasional ceremonies. Such are the pitfalls yawning for the feet of those who marry into strange lands. Yet if we give sympathy, it may be misdirected. She met the position with some courage, some gaiety, some concessions to the opinions of others, and some occasional stubbornness when she felt that a limit should not be passed. She would meet the later troubles of life with the same resolute spirit (Scott was to write of her, on the day after her death, as “the sharer of my thoughts and counsels, who could always talk down my sense of the calamitous apprehensions which break the heart that must bear them alone”); she would meet that death (“You all have such melancholy faces!”) with the same laughing eyes.
She made many friends. Walter’s invalid sister extended her passionate love for her favourite brother to include his wife.
His own friends received her with enthusiasm. The legal fraternity of the Mountain had just been deprived of the two ladies who had been most closely associated with it. Jane Cranston had married, as had William Erskine’s sister. They found that Mrs. Walter Scott would entertain them gladly. The officers of the Cavalry regiment which he had done so much to create were another circle of acquaintance to which she was welcome. They formed a club, meeting weekly for dinner at each others’ houses. The two circles (several belonged to both) consisted of young men of limited means, of busy days, of high ambitions which were realised in a surprising proportion of instances. Broadly considered, they were of good characters and an exceptional intellectual standard. Charlotte was fortunate in her husband’s friends.
They went often to the theatre, usually with William Erskine for company. It had been one of Walter’s pleasures ever since, and as often as, his means permitted. It was an amusement of which Charlotte was passionately fond. Swiftly and happily the winter passed, and when spring came they found a cottage at Lasswade, six miles out in the Esk valley, and Scott forgot his disposition to wander over the country, as he tamed its garden to order, and Charlotte made its single living-room suitable to entertain their friends.
CHAPTER XIX.
In the spring of 1797 there were few men whose literary reputation stood higher than that of Matthew Gregory Lewis. Time has shortened that stature, as it has laughed at his own diminutive proportions. To do him justice, we must look at what he did in relation to his own time. He had written a romance, The Monk, which was of a universal popularity. It had given him the nickname of Monk Lewis, by which he became more generally known. He was a lover of poetry, and, if not a great poet, he had a sound technique, and he did not attempt more than he was capable of doing, which is not a universal wisdom among men of literature. He was an enthusiastic collector of ballads. He had a design of bringing out a volume of such pieces which was to be entitled Tales of Terror, for which he was collecting materials. William Erskine went up to London, and met him there. He talked about his friend, Walter Scott, and showed the two translated ballads which had been so abortively printed. He said there were others to be obtained