Female Portrait Gallery, from Sir Walter Scott/Alice Lee

by Letitia Elizabeth Landon

FEMALE PORTRAIT GALLERY, FROM SIR WALTER SCOTT.

BY THE AUTHOR OF "THE IMPROVVISATRICE."

No. III.—Alice Lee.

From Marmion to Woodstock is a wide step—it passes over the greater portion of Sir Walter's life—they belong indeed to periods as widely different as they are widely apart. Marmion belongs to the spring, Woodstock to the autumn. The one is fresh, eager, and impetuous, there are the winds of March, and the flowers of April; it abounds with that prodigality of power and beauty which belongs to the year's first and lavish season. The other has the same power and the same beauty—but the exercise of the one is skilful, and the display of the other mellowed. But it is in the writer's self that the chief change is found—many a hue has faded from the landscape—many a green leaf turned yellow since the exquisite introductions ushered in the various cantos. Many a pulse, too, has lost its elasticity—many a warm quick emotion sleeps to awaken no more: the heart loses its youth while the mind is in all its vigour. In one of the memoranda of the deeply-affecting journal in the last volume of "Scott's Life," he observes:—"People say that the whole human frame in all its parts and divisions, is gradually, in the act, decaying and renewing. What a curious timepiece it would be that could indicate to us the moment this gradual and insensible change had so completely taken place that no atom was left of the original person who had existed at a certain period, but there existed in his stead another person having the same thews and sinews, the same face and lineaments, the same consciousness—a new ship built on an old plank—a pair of transmigrated stockings like those of Sir John Cutler, all green without one thread of the original black left! singular, to be at once another and the same."

By-the-by, this doctrine of perpetual transmigration would be a curious plea to urge for the non-fulfilment of former engagements; seven years is I believe the term allotted for the entire change. Now, might not a man encumbered with debt plead at the expiration of the period in the Courts of Westminster, that he was not the person who actually contracted those debts? Or might not an inconstant couple sue for a divorce, on the plea that neither were the individuals who originally married? But as—

              
"In these nice quibbles of the law,
Good sooth, I am no wiser than a daw,"

I shall leave these intricate questions to closer casuists. But if the outward world be changed, how much more changed is that within!

"'Tis not from youth's smooth cheek alone,
    The bloom that fades so fast,
But the tender bloom of the heart is gone
    Before its youth be past."

We set out in life, generous, frank, and confiding; the first emotion is always kind and lofty—we are eager to love, for we feel that affection is enjoyment, and that "happiness was born a twin. The world seems filled with beauty, and our very fancies are tangible delights."

"We clothe the palpable and the familiar
With golden exhalations from the dawn."

But the mist melts away, and with it half the loveliness of the landscape: we are startled to find in how many illusions we have indulged. The dew-drops that glittered as if just melted from some fairy rainbow, are shaken from the bough, and there hangs the bare and thorny branch—old friends have fallen from us, and their memory is sad:—

"They come in long procession led
The cold, the faithless, and the dead."

It is no longer easy to supply their place—love is no longer the easy and the credulous. We investigate the motive, where we once trusted to the impulse: we doubt, because we have been deceived: we cannot choose but remember how often our kindliest feelings have been wasted, and our confidence been betrayed. The dark past flings its shadow forward on our path like a perpetual warning; it is no longer easy to spring into the sunshine. We all grow wiser, but assuredly we are grown colder and graver. The sadness of youth is half poetry. Wordsworth truly says

"In youth sad fancies we affect,
In luxury of disrespect,
Of our own prodigal excess
Of too familiar happiness."

Youth has sorrows, but maturity has cares, and the care is harder to bear than the sorrow. Circumstances, too, may change around us; and the trouble that comes late in the day is a heavy burden. We have no longer the alacrity of spirit that feels but half the weight it carries. I know nothing so touching as the account in "Scott's Memoirs" of how different the modes of composition which led to the production of Marmion and of Woodstock. The poet of Marmion delighted in the external impulse—the verse rose sounding in his ears while loitering beneath the tall old ash-trees with the wind in their branches and the sunshine on their leaves. He caught his melody when

⁠"——thoughts awake
By lone St. Mary's silent lake."

The battle of Flodden filled his mind when "he used to delight in walking his powerful black steed up and down by himself on the Porto Bello sands within the beating of the surge, and now and then you would see him plunge in his spurs, and go off as if at the charge, with the spray dashing about him. As we rode back to Musselburgh, he often came and placed himself beside me*^[1] to repeat the verses that he had been composing during the pauses of our exercise." Lockhart remarks, "I well remember his saying, as I rode with him across the hills from Ashetiel to Newark one day in his declining years—'Oh, man, I had many a grand gallop among these braes, when I was thinking of Marmion, but a trotting canny pony must serve me now.'".

Scott apologising—ah, how needlessly!—for the exquisite epistles to his friends in "Marmion" says—"I was still young, light-hearted, and happy—and 'out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.'"

"Look on this picture and on this."

It would be sacrilege to alter one word of Lockhart's touching, deeply touching, description of his literary labours years afterwards.

"He read, and noted, and indexed, with the pertinacity of some pale compiler in the British Museum; but rose from such employment, not radiant and buoyant as after he had been feasting himself among the teeming harvests of fancy, but with an aching brow, and eyes on which the dimness of years had began to plant some specks, before they were subjected again to that straining over small print and difficult MS. which had no doubt been familiar to them in the early time, when, in Shortreed's phrase, 'he was making himself.' It was a pleasant sight when one happened to take a peep into his den, to see the white head erect, and the smile of conscious inspiration on his lips; while the pen, held boldly and at a commanding distance, glanced steadily and gaily along a fast blackening page of the 'Talisman.' It now often made me sorry to catch a glimpse of him; stooping and poring with his spectacles, amidst piles of authorities, a little note-book in the left hand, that had always been at liberty for patting Maida." Sir Walter himself often alludes in his Journal to his disinclination for composition, and the way in which, during the progress of Woodstock, he had to force his mind to the task. In one part, it is "I hope to sleep better to-night; if I do not, I shall get ill, and then I shall not be able to keep my engagements." Then come continual enumerations of the number of pages written, and remarks on the physical weakness. "I am a good deal jaded, and will not work till after dinner. There is a sort of drowsy vacillation of the mind attends fatigue with me:—I can command my pen as the school-copy recommends, but cannot equally command my thoughts, and often write one word for another." In addition are perpetual recurrences to the pecuniary difficulties in which he is involved:—difficulties whose endurance sets the rack and wheel at defiance; they are—

 
"Tortures the poor alone can know,
The proud alone can feel."

Yet these were the circumstances under which Woodstock, one of the most striking and original of his works, was produced. The history of most fictions would be far stranger than the fictions themselves; but it would be a dark and sad chronicle. Half the works that constitute the charm of our leisure, that give their own interest to the long November evening, or add to the charm of a summer noon beneath the greenwood tree, are the offspring of poverty and of pain. Dr. Johnson wrote Rasselas to pay the last decent respect of the living to the dead—his mother's funeral expenses. How often is the writer obliged to put his own trouble, his suffering, or his sorrow aside, to finish his task! The hand may tremble, the eyes fill with unbidden tears, and the temples throb with feverish pain, yet how often is there some hard and harsh necessity, which says, "the work must be done." Readers, in general, think little of this: they will say, "Dear! how delightful to be able to write such charming things! how it must amuse you!" I believe if there were only the author's amusement in the case it would fall very short of their own; not but what composition has its moments of keen and rapid delight when the scene rises vividly before you, and the mind is warm with the consciousness of its own powers: but these are only "angel visits," they do not form the staple of any work. Literature soon becomes a power, not what it once was, a passion; but literary success, like all others, is only to be obtained, and retained, by labour—and labour and inclination do not always go together. Take all our most eminent writers, and the quantity of work, hard work, they have got through, will be found enormous and perpetual. Literature, as a profession, allows little leisure, and less indulgence. The readers are the gainers: to them how little difference does it make that Marmion was written in youth, health, and prosperity; while Woodstock was the weary task of breaking health, and broken fortunes—their amusement is the same! But even to the most careless, a deeper interest is thrown around these volumes, and every little touch of individuality seems like the familiar intercourse of a friend. Lockhart says in the Memoir, "I know not how others interpreted various passages in Woodstock, but there were not a few that carried deep meaning, for such of Scott's own friends as were acquainted with, not his pecuniary misfortunes alone, but the drooping health of his wife, and the consolation afforded him by the dutiful devotion of his daughter Anne, in whose character and demeanour a change had occurred exactly similar to that painted in poor Alice Lee—'a light joyous air, with something of a humorous expression, which seemed to be looking for amusement, had vanished before the touch of affection, and a calm melancholy had supplied its place, which seemed on the watch to administer comfort to others.'"

There is a very touching allusion to Miss Scott's anxiety about her father's enjoyments, in the Diary:—"Anne is practising Scottish songs, which I take as a kind compliment to my own taste, as her's leads her chiefly to foreign music. I think the good girl sees that I want and must miss her sister's peculiar talent in singing the airs of our native country, which, imperfect as my musical ear is, make, and have always made, the most pleasing impression on me; and so, if she puts a constraint on herself for my sake, I can only say in requital, 'God bless her!'" There is sunshine in a shady place, and it is soothing to imagine the pleasure that Scott must have had while investing the creature of his imagination with the love and devotion which had been his own solace. There is a striking reality about the character of Alice Lee. They are indeed unfortunate who can recall no likeness, who are not reminded of some actual instance of affection lightening adversity, and shedding its own sweetness over the sorrow which it could at least share. Alice Lee is among the most loveable of Scott's feminine creations. No writer possessed, to a greater degree, that faculty which Coleridge so prettily describes in one line—

"My eyes make pictures when they're shut."

And every appearance of Alice Lee is a picture. We see her first in the shadowy twilight, the light step of youth subdued to the heavier tread of age; and in the dialogue that follows, with what force, and yet what delicacy, we are made acquainted with the innermost recesses of the maiden's heart! Alice is at the most interesting period of a woman's existence—when the character is gradually forming under circumstances that develop all the latent qualities. The rose has opened to the summer—the girl has suddenly become a woman.

Alice Lee's predominate feeling is attachment to her father: her love for her cousin is a gentle and quiet love; it belongs to the ease and familiarity of childhood; it is constantly subdued by a rival and holier sentiment. Alice's devotion to her father is not merely the fulfilment of a duty, it is a warmer and keener emotion—there is pity and enthusiasm blended with her filial piety—she sees the kind-hearted old man bowed by adversity, mortified in all those innocent vanities which sit closely to every heart; his old age is deprived of those comforts with which youth may dispense—but which are hard to lose when they are, and have long been, matters both of right and habit. No wonder that his child clings to him with a deeper, sadder, tenderness. Who can avoid bringing the picture home to Scott himself? his difficulties seem peculiarly adapted to awaken the most painful sympathy. They came upon him in his old age, yet were met with the noblest spirit of resistance. From the time that he felt labour to be a duty—with what unflinching earnestness did he set about that labour! Not even when working to achieve the dearest objects of his ambition—to become the master of Abbotsford—to settle an eldest and beloved son in life—did Scott exert himself as he did when the exertion was for his creditors. It seems doubly hard when we think how much others had to do with the burden whose weight was upon him even to the grave.

While on this subject, may I be permitted a few words concerning one to whose memory but harsh and scanty justice has been allotted—I allude to the late Mr. Constable? Perhaps I may be biassed by the recollection of kindness extended to myself when very young. Mr. Constable was the first publisher with whom I had ever any communication. His peculiarly kind and courteous manner (I went to visit some near relatives in the North under his escort) left an indelible impression. I was then a child in everything, especially judgment; and would as little now venture to pronounce on affairs of which I can know nothing. But I may be allowed to dwell on the general benevolence of Mr. Constable's character. Sir Walter Scott particularly remarks, that Constable's individual expenses were moderate, and within what his income would have seemed to justify: if he failed, it was in the cause of that literature to which he devoted himself with an enthusiasm of an order far beyond the mere speculations of profit. There must have been delicacy, as well as generosity, in the mind that concealed from the author any comparative failure in the sale of his works, lest it should damp his genius. Look what its first great publisher did for the publishing trade in Edinburgh; with him it rose into existence and prosperity, and with him it died. He originated our first periodical—and, both in literature and in politics, what vast influence has been, and is exercised by the "Edinburgh Review!" He, too, was the first person who saw the growing demand of the public mind for intellectual food; and the plan of cheap publication, so general now, and profitable to so many, was Mr. Constable's idea. In his long career, how many owed to him kindness and assistance—and how melancholy were its closing scenes! The body destroyed—the mind broken down: such was the close of the great publisher—and of the great author!

"Woodstock" belongs to a better time. Scott felt his powers vigorous as ever—and no one could imagine and dwell upon such a creation as Alice Lee, and not be the better and the happier. Every time she appears on the scene she brings with her an atmosphere of purity and beauty. How lovely is the scene conjured up in the little hut, when the evening hymn disturbs, but to make musical, the silence of the forest glades; and the words of faith and hope, cheering the gentle and maiden heart, which was their worthy temple! Again, in what a noble and high spirit is her rejection of Charles's ungenerous suit. Only one of a school, whose profligacy was the cold result of vanity, could have insulted a purity so simple and so apparent, by dishonourable affection. But it is mockery to use the word affection in such a case. I do not believe that affection can exist without truth, without the ideal, and without blending with itself all that is best and most earnest in our nature. Charles thinks far less of Alice than of the sneer of Buckingham and the jest of Rochester.

As I said before, a series of pictures might be formed of Alice in the various situations of "Woodstock." There are three which have always singularly impressed my imagination. The first is the little turret, with Dr. Rochecliffe in the little turret-chamber, when he proposes to her to make a seeming assignation with the King: there is the dignity that would light her eyes, the timidity that would colour her cheek, and the intuitive sense of right that could not for a moment tamper with its fine sense of maidenly propriety. Then the second, where she stands in the green coppice looking, as she thinks, her last on the lover who leaves her under the most bitter perversion of her real meaning: her cheek is white as monumental marble, and her long fair curls damp with the heavy dews—they are the faint outward sign of what is passing in her heart. The third is where, escaped from a danger which had seemed so certain and so imminent, she throws herself half in thankfulness, half in affection, into her father's arms, and then is suddenly recalled into a sweet and timid consciousness of Markham Everard's presence.

None of Sir Walter's novels end more satisfactorily than "Woodstock." There could be but one destiny for Alice—the genial and quiet circle of an English home, whose days are filled with pleasant duties, and whose sphere lies around the hearth. The devoted daughter is what she ought to be—the affectionate mother and the happy wife.
⁠L. E. L.

1. ⁠* Mr. Skene