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“Friendship, esteem, and
fair regard,
And praise, the poet’s best reward!” –
These were the gifts
bestowed by the lovely Matilda upon her faithful Wilfred in Sir Walter
Scott’s poem of Rokeby. The author himself had probably a wider
experience of popular applause and appreciation than the majority of
mankind. In nothing surely was he more blessed than in those friendships
which played so agreeable a part in his life. From early days, when he was
rapidly winning his laurels in the field of letters, to later years when
he struggled so gallantly with an overwhelming burden of debt and
misfortune, Scott could always find courage and comfort in the unswerving
loyalty of a large circle of devoted friends. Of Sir Walter’s literary
friendships none is perhaps of greater interest than the intimacy which
the novelist had formed with Lady Louisa Stuart before he reached the age
of five-and-twenty, and which was only terminated by his death in 1832.
Scott was well accustomed
to the adulation of his women friends; indeed, he may at times have found
it somewhat tedious. But an appreciation of his talents founded upon a
knowledge of literature so intimate and extensive as that of Lady Louisa
could not fail to prove agreeable to him. That he set high store by it is
clear from the fact that he made a practice of submitting much of his work
to the discriminating eye of one whom he described as the “best critic” of
his acquaintance.
Lady Louisa Stuart was born
on August 12, 1757. She was one of a large family of five boys and six
girls, the children of John, Earl of Bute, Prime Minister to George III.
Lord Bute was a statesman whose unpopularity with the English public is
notorious. It arose from a number of causes. In the first place he had
been the constant and almost the sole companion of King George before that
monarch ascended the throne; and the lot of a court favourite in those
days might occasionally be a pleasant but was never a popular one. To Lord
Bute the Heir-Apparent made a practice of unbosoming his inmost thoughts
in the course of those long walks which they were in the habit of taking
together. The two friends would ride daily side by side in the Park. They
spent much time in an intimate companionship which could hardly fail to
arouse the jealousy of those who were favoured with somewhat less of the
royal society. Then, too, the fact of his being a Scotsman exposed Lord
Bute to the hatred of the majority of the English people, at a time when
the rebellion of 1745 was still fresh in the popular memory. He was the
possessor of a very handsome person, of which advantage, we are told, he
was not insensible. His enemies even went so far as to assert that he
spent many hours every day in contemplating the symmetry of his own legs
in the looking-glass. He might no doubt have employed his time more
profitably, but the study of one’s figure – especially if it be a fine and
shapely one – is a failing hardly sufficient in itself to deserve the
odium of the populace. But the Prime Minister indulged in other habits
which were more calculated to evoke the harsh criticism of the world. He
enjoyed a higher place in the affection of the Princess-Dowager of Wales
then a purely Platonic friendship commanded or strict propriety permitted.
His clandestine nocturnal visits to Carlton House were the subject of
general comment, and provoked the famous mot of the future Duchess
of Kingston, at that time Maid of Honour to the princess, who replied,
when reproached for some irregularity of conduct, “Votre Altesse Royale
sait que chaqu’un a son But!” [Memoirs of Sir Nathaniel Wraxall,
p.321.]
Lord Bute, indeed, provided
endless material for the gossips and scandal-mongers of society. The
authors of political squibs and satires lampooned him freely; the
caricaturists of the period found him an inspiring subject for their
scurrilous pencils. [All who were in any way connected with him were
mercilessly attacked. When the Adelphi was built upon the Thames
Embankment, the brothers Adam, who had by Lord Bute’s influence been
appointed architects of the new buildings, did not escape the satire, and
were thus ridiculed in the Foundling Hospital for Wit, (vol. iv.):-
“Four Scotchmen by the
name of Adam,
Who kept their coaches
and their Madam,”
Quoth John, in sulky
mood to Thomas,
“Have stole the very
river from us!” ] On the occasion of his
first levee, some member of the huge crowd that blocked the street
inquired what was the matter, and George Brudenel, a well-known wag, at
once answered, “Matter enough! There’s a Scotchman got into the Treasury
and they can’t get him out!” [A Century of Anecdote, by J. Timbs.]
But if Lord Bute was a never-ending delight to the satirist and a bugbear
to the public, in the circle of his own home he seems to have inspired
respect and affection, though periodic bouts of ill-temper made him at
times inaccessible even to his own children.
Lady Louisa’s mother was
the daughter of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, whose letters are as well known
as her famous quarrel with Pope, and for whose epistolary style a modern
critic has claimed a higher order of literary excellence than that
attained by either Lord Chesterfield of Horace Walpole. [Men and Letters,
By Herbert Paul, p.184.] From her grandmother Lady Louisa
undoubtedly inherited the gift of expressing herself on paper with a
vivacity and humour which made her correspondence most welcome to her
contemporaries, and still enable it to retain a perennial interest for the
readers of to-day. In some introductory remarks which Lady Louisa wrote in
1837 for an edition of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s works, she says of her
grandmother’s style that, “though correct and perspicuous, it was
unstudied, natural, flowing, spirited; she never used an unnecessary word,
nor a phrase savouring of affectation; but still she meant to write well,
and was conscious of having succeeded.” [Introductory Anecdotes to the
Works and Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.] Much the same criticism
might be written on the subject of Lady Louisa’s letters. But she was
clearly not conscious of the success she achieved, and the masculine note,
which sounds so clear throughout the grandmother’s correspondence, is
replaced by a far tenderer tone in that of the granddaughter.
In her nursery days she
devoted much of her leisure to attempts at jotting down her thoughts and
opinions. Lady Mary Coke, the youngest daughter of John, Duke of Argyle,
in her Memoirs, recalls her first meeting with Lady Louisa, “a very
extraordinary Girl, who has certainly a great genius,” when the latter was
only ten years old. “I stayed with Lady Bute until two o’clock,” wrote
Lady Mary in 1767, “and was much impressed with her youngest daughter, who
showed us the beginning of a French novel written by herself, and informed
us She was going to write a play, that the plan was fixt, and was to be
taken from a Roman Story.” [The Letters and Journals of Lady Mary Coke,
edited by the Hon. J.A. Home, vol. i. p.174. (David Douglas: Edinburgh,
1889.) “Jugurtha” was the hero of this play, which does not appear to have
been completed.
Lord Bute retired from
public life in 1763, when Lady Louisa was five years old, and devoted
himself to horticulture and other rural pursuits, perhaps more suited to
his talents – certainly more agreeable to his tastes. Science and botany
were his particular hobbies, and he published at his own expense an
illustrated work in nine volumes on the subject of British plants, only
twelve copies of which were printed, at a cost which is said to have
reached £10,000.
In due course Lady Louisa
was introduced by her devoted mother to the beau monde. Lady Bute
was a welcome figure in the social world of London. Beneath an exterior
which Fanny Burney describes as being forbidding to strangers, she
possessed “powers of conversation the most entertaining and lively,” when
among intimates. Under her chaperonage Lady Louisa attended the soirées,
routs, and other social functions to which a girl of her rank was sure of
an invitation. These she enjoyed with all the healthy delight which such
entertainments inspire in the heart of any normal debutante of high
spirits. But she was far too broad-minded to be content with the trivial
round of social gaieties which satisfied so many of her young companions.
In the privacy of her own room in her father’s magnificent house in
Berkeley Square she found time to keep herself in touch with the literary
interests of the day, as well as for a voluminous correspondence with her
friends. As a girl, her powers of observation were extraordinary, and in a
manuscript notebook she has described with much humour that select circle
of which she was so brilliant a member. Among the sketches of London
society which she then made is an amusing account of a party given in the
salon of Mrs. Montagu, the leader of the famous Blue-Stocking Society.
Mrs. Montagu – the “Noble Lady” so perfectly described in her old age by
Mrs. Carlyle, herself perhaps the best letter-writer in our language – was
distinguished for her benevolence to poor chimney-sweepers for whom she
provided annual banquets, and who were certainly not among the least
deserving objects of her wide philanthropy. She had a large fortune, a
fine house, and a good cook. Besides this she was a very clever woman. It
was natural, therefore, that she should shine as a hostess. Acquainted
with almost everybody of distinction, she made a point of entertaining all
authors, critics, artists, and musicians of note, as well as eminent
lawyers and a sprinkling of the clergy. She was gracious enough to extend
her hospitality to the minor lights of the literary profession, who were
much honoured by her patronage. Distinguished foreigners were sure of a
warm welcome in her house, and it was impossible to attend one of her
parties without having the pleasure of staring at a celebrity of some kind
or another. But there was in her system of inviting guests a deplorable
lack of one requisite, namely, of that art of kneading the mass well
together, and art which is possessed by women far the intellectual
inferiors of Mrs. Montagu. “As her company came in, a heterogeneous
medley,” says Lady Louisa, “so they went out, each individual feeling
himself single, and (to borrow a French phrase) embarrassed with his own
person; which might be partly owing to the awkward position of the
furniture, the mal-arrangement of tables and chairs. Everything in that
house, as if under a spell, was sure to form itself into a circle or
semi-circle.” Lady Louisa thus describes a typical party at which she was
a guest. “Mrs. Montagu having invited us to a very early party, we went at
the hour appointed and took our stations in a vast half-moon, consisting
of about twenty or twenty-five women, where, placed between two grave
faces unknown to me, I sate, hiding yawns with my fan, and wondering at
the unwonted seclusion of the superior sex. At length a door opened behind
us, and a body of eminent personages – the Chancellor, I think, and a
bishop or two among them – filed in from the dining-room. They looked
wistfully over our shoulders at a good fire, which the barrier we
presented left them no means of approaching; then drawing chairs from the
wall, seated themselves around us in an outer crescent, silent and solemn
as our own. Nobody could be more displeased at this than the mistress of
the house, who wanted to confer with them face to face, and not in
whispers. But there was no remedy; we must all have died at our posts, if
one lady had not luckily been called away, whose exit made a gap for the
wise men to enter and take possession of the fireplace.” [Gleanings from
an Old Portfolio, vol. iii. p.61.]
There is, as lady Louisa
suggests, nothing in the world so depressing as a social gathering of
which the elements are inharmonious or unsympathetic. Nor is anything so
fatal as an attempt to give an entertainment of what is called a “mixed”
description. The lions of the day are furious at being asked to meet one
another. They sit and glare at the floor in sullen silence. Like the
animals in Bombastes Furioso, “the last lion thinks the first a
bore,” and not all the blandishments of a seductive hostess can induce
them to roar in unison. The artistic world has no wish to meet the society
world; the society world finds nothing to say to the artistic world. The
effect of combining the two results in a gloomy form of conversazione from
which everybody hastens away with a sigh of relief.
Lady Louisa was fortunate
in possessing a keen sense of humour, that saving quality which makes so
many tedious situations tolerable. She did not make fun of her friends,
but found much harmless amusement in the many idiosyncrasies of those whom
she met in London society. There was a number of extremely peculiar people
about in those days, especially in the ranks of the old ladies. Among
these whose eccentricities particularly appealed to Lady Louisa was Lady
Margaret Compton, whom she described as “an old maiden lady with a
formidable wig, one of the regular quadrille party,” who was noted for
shedding tears when she lost at cards, “not for the loss itself,” as she
declared, “but for the unkindness of the cards.” [Journal of Lady Mary
Coke, vol. iii. p.136, note. This old lady was the cause of one of the
most brilliant of Walpole’s many bon-mots. She had been bemoaning
the fact that she was “as poor as Job.” “I wonder why people always say
‘As poor as Job,’ and never ‘As rich,’” asked her friend Lady Barrymore;
“for at one time in his life he had great riches.” “Yes,” said Walpole,
“but then they pronounced the name differently and call him Jobb!”
(See A Century of Anecdote, p.40.)]
Lady Louisa was an earnest
and kindly student of human nature. She cherished a profound devotion for
the world at large. She might truly have said of herself, as did Abou Ben
Adhem, “Write me as one who loves his fellow-men.” Consequently she was
never bored; she could obtain pleasure from the most incongruous society;
her soul was filled with a universal tolerance which ensured for her a
well-deserved popularity and a warm welcome wherever she went.
At a comparatively early
age Lady Louisa conceived a romantic affection for her second cousin,
Colonel William Medows, who was the son of Philip Medows of Thoresbury,
Notts, and of Lady Frances Pierrepoint (sister of the 1st Duke
of Kingston). But the course of a first love seldom runs smoothly, and
that of Lady Louisa was no exception to the rule. Lord Bute considered the
young man so ineligible that, in accordance with the immemorial custom of
stern fathers, he put a speedy stop to the affair, and the youthful couple
were forced to part in tears. Colonel Medows appears to have been the only
man who ever kindled the spark of love in Lady Louisa’s breast, and his
enforced dismissal was a source of very deep disappointment to her. “He
seems to have that independent spirit which fortune cannot depress or
exalt,” she wrote in 1784. “He is really a character unlike anything but
himself, au reste, the most agreeable man I ever met with, and one
of the most humorous.” [Gleanings from an Old Portfolio, vol. i. p.301.]
It would no doubt be pleasant to be able to add that the gallant colonel
pined away from grief and disappointment, entered a monastery, and
registered a vow of perpetual celibacy. Truth, however, compels the
admission that he did nothing of the sort. He did not die of a broken
heart, as would have been a very right and proper thing to do, but shortly
afterwards consoled himself by marrying another lady. [He was
eventually appointed Governor of Madras, where he greatly distinguished
himself, was made a General and K.C.B., and died in 1813.]
Lady Louisa’s first love
affair proved also to be her last, but, although she does not seem to have
contemplated matrimony very seriously in later years, it was not the lack
of admirers that impelled her to remain single. She was never, it is said,
a beautiful woman, but possessed to an unusual extent that elusive quality
called “charm,” which as a rule proves fully as attractive as the more
easily defined gift of physical beauty. Fanny Burney has drawn a miniature
pen-portrait of her which helps to explain her popularity. “Lady Louisa
Stuart,” she says (writing in 1786), “has parts equal to those of her
mother, with a deportment and appearance infinitely more pleasing: yet she
is far from handsome, but proves how well beauty may be occasionally
missed when understanding and vivacity unite to fill up her place.” [The
Diary and Letters of Madame D’Arblay, edited by Charlotte Barrett, vol.
iii. p.237. (1842).] It is not therefore difficult to understand that
several of the foremost men of her time should have laid siege to the
heart of so charming a woman, though it may be less easy to appreciate
Lady Louisa’s decision to remain a life-long spinster. Like many other
women of wit, she was hard to please, and might have explained her reasons
for remaining unmarried in the words of Becky Monteith, a celebrated
beauty, who, on being asked why she had remained single so long, replied:
“Ye see, I wadna hae the walkers, and the riders gaed by!” A woman’s taste
becomes more fastidious as she grows older, and by the time she has
reached an age at which, in the opinion of her friends, she should be
content with any marriage, before it be too late to marry at all, she has
grown so particular as to the necessary qualifications of a suitable
husband that her requirements are hardly likely to be satisfied. This
seems an unfortunate provision of Nature, usually so tactful in
controlling the laws of supply and demand, and is the reason why many of
the most delightful women remain single until all their admirers have
grown tired of waiting and are married to less fastidious wives.
Lady Louisa waited on and
on, in the hope that a second Colonel Medows would appear upon the scene.
Failing, however, to find a love worthy to take the place of her first,
she could not bring herself to be content with the second-best suitors who
in turn presented themselves to her notice, but whom she smilingly
dismissed one after another. Her first admirer was Henry Dundas, then
member of Parliament for Midlothian, who was already a married man, but
had been legally separated from his wife. His attachment to Lady Louisa
caused her family a good deal of needless anxiety. Dundas was too gallant
and handsome a man to be altogether ignored, but fortunately his devotion
did not last very long, nor does it ever appear to have prompted Lady
Louisa to any feeling deeper than that of quiet amusement. Another suitor
who, for a time at least, proved very attentive, was John Charles
Villiers, second son of the 1st Earl of Clarendon. This
ubiquitous admirer hovered round Lady Louisa persistently, and dogged her
footsteps on every possible occasion. At each rout which she attended he
would place himself ostentatiously at her side. He was ever the first to
open the door of her coach, or to assist her in alighting from her chair.
In fact, he overwhelmed her with homage and admiration. She would not have
been human had she failed to appreciate his exquisite manners, or to be
flattered by his importunity. Lady Bute, too, encouraged her daughter to
consider this match more seriously, and Lady Louisa herself gave the
matter much careful thought. The advantages of so suitable a marriage were
many and obvious, and it says a great deal for her strength of mind that
she was able to forego the privileges and comfort it would secure. But she
finally decided that a “love match without any love,” as she termed it,
was “but a bad business,” and determined to remain single all her life
sooner than make a match upon such conditions. Vainly did her best friends
assure her that a spinster is forgotten and starves in a garret, while
“two people of fashion never starve together”; vainly did her relatives
speak of the ravages of time and the proverbial miseries of a solitary
second childhood. Lady Louisa’s independent spirit revolted against the
idea of a loveless marriage, the danger of solitary starvation was not one
that she had any reason to anticipate, and a spinster she remained to the
end of her days; nor does she ever seem to have had reason to regret her
persistent decision to renounce matrimony for good and all. [The
following extract from one of Lady Louisa’s letters expresses her views
upon the subject very clearly: “I desired her [Miss Herbert, sister of
Henry Herbert, afterwards Earl of Carnarvon] to pluck up a spirit and say,
as I was determined to do for the future, instead of I can’t and I
shan’t, I won’t marry. She told me a story I thought good
enough. Lady Caroline Montagu, afterwards Lady Queensberry, was persuading
an old friend that had been her sister virgin to marry somebody who, she
owned, would not have done for her formerly, but whom she ought to think
now a very good match. ‘What!’ said the other, ‘and do you think I have
waited so long to take up with him at last?’ I like this way of
thinking mightily. To be sure, waiting long in all other cases gives one a
right to a better thing than one expected at the beginning, but I doubt
one should not get anybody to allow such a claim as this.” (Gleanings
from an Old Portfolio, vol. i. p.293).]
There was yet a third man
of fashion with whom the name of Lady Louisa was for a time connected. On
the death of Anne, Lady Strafford (daughter of John, Duke of Argyll), the
gossips of society at once arranged a match between Lady Louisa Stuart and
the newly-bereaved widower. The approaching marriage of this ill-assorted
pair was announced in every paper, and provided the busybodies with as
fertile a topic of conversation as do the annual engagements of peers and
actresses, which help to stimulate the small talk of a modern
dinner-table. One-half of London society smiled knowingly at the other,
and declared that it had long suspected something of the sort. The other
half retorted by exclaiming, “What did I tell you?” and wisely shook its
head. Both were equally delighted at having found a fresh source of
gossip. Such a match was not very generally approved, however. “So Lady
Louisa Stuart is going to marry her great-grandfather, is she?” said Lady
Di Beauclerk to a friend. “If she can hold her nose and swallow the dose
at once, it may do well. But most people would be apt to take a little
sweetness in their mouths afterwards.” [Memoirs of the Argylls. (Included
in the Journal of Lady Mary Coke,) vol. i. p.xlix.] Lady Louisa
was, indeed, quite unwilling to swallow the dose, which was equally averse
to being swallowed. She had always looked upon Lord Strafford in the light
of a kind but elderly uncle, rather than a possible suitor. He, too, was
thoroughly opposed to the alliance, and the whole affair ended as speedily
as it had begun, without occasioning anything more serious than a certain
measure of natural annoyance on the part of the two principals. After the
usual nine days of wonder, the matter was allowed to recede into the
nebulous background whence it had originally sprung, and fashionable
society turned its attention to some more amusing, but doubtless equally
unreliable, scrap of misinformation.
For nearly twenty years,
from her first appearance in London society to her father’s death in 1792,
Lady Louisa met and enjoyed the acquaintance of most of the interesting
characters of her time. She was always her mother’s constant and devoted
companion. The two were everywhere acclaimed with the enthusiastic welcome
to which their mental qualities and brilliant conversational powers
entitled them. “Nobody is more agreeable than Lady Bute,” says Mrs. Delany
in one of her letters. “Her natural and improved good sense and knowledge
of the world is a never-failing fund when she has spirits to exert her
talents,” [“…You know so much of Lady Bute,” she wrote in 1774
to Bernard Granville, “that I need say nothing of her agreeableness, her
good sense, and good principles, which with great civility must be always
pleasing.” – Autobiography and Correspondence of Mrs. Delany, vol.
v. p.36. (1861.)] which, however, was not always the case. Fanny
Burney used to meet Lady Bute and her daughter frequently in the house of
her friends, “both,” as she says, “in such high spirits themselves that
they kept up all the conversation between them, with a vivacity, an
acuteness, an archness, and an observation on men and manners so clear and
sagacious” as to add very considerably to the evening’s entertainment. She
describes a typical occasion when she found them at the house of Mrs.
Delany (in 1786) on their return form Bath, “full fraught with anecdote
and character, which they dealt out to their hearers with so much point
and humour (she says) that we attended to them like a gratified audience
of a public place.” [Diary and Letters of Madame D’Arblay, vol. iii.
p.463.]
The death of Lady Bute, who
only survived her husband for two years, was a sad blow, not only to her
favourite daughter, but also to a large number of friends. “Lady But is a
great loss to me,” says Horace Walpole in one of his letters; “she was the
only remaining one of my contemporaries who had submitted to grow old and
to stay at home in an evening.” [Letters of Horace Walpole, vol. ix.
p.450.]
At her mother’s decease
Lady Louisa settled in a house in London, No. 108 Gloucester Place. Here
she resided until the day of her death, the centre of a circle of intimate
and devoted friends. During her father’s lifetime she had made the
acquaintance of many interesting personages in the world of art and
letters. Of these, their talents or peculiarities, she was never tired of
speaking. One of the most curious was John Hoole, the poet and translator
of Tasso and Ariosto, “and in that capacity,” as Sir Walter Scott
remarked, “a noble transmuter of gold into lead.” [The Journal of Sir
Walter Scott, vol. i. p.204.] Him she had met in early life when,
as a clerk in the India House, with a snuff-coloured suit of clothes and
long ruffles, he paid occasional visits to Lord Bute. Hoole made it a
custom to complete so many couplets every day, habit making it light to
him, “however heavy it might seem to the reader,” [Lockhart’s Life
of Scott, p.341.] and his quaint appearance was one of Lady
Louisa’s earliest recollections.
Her acquaintance with
Walter Scott, of which the seeds were sown at Dalkeith Palace, the seat of
the Duke of Buccleuch, ripened into friendship at Bothwell Castle, where
in 1799 the novelist was staying with Lord Douglas and his wife, formerly
Lady Frances Scott, with whom he had long been on terms of the warmest
affection. Ten years later we hear of the poet reading his Stag Chase
to Lady Louisa when they were staying together with the Duke of
Montrose at Buchanan House. As the years went by, this friendship between
Scott and Lady Louisa deepened and strengthened, and these kindred spirits
forged a bond of mutual sympathy and common tastes that linked them
together in an intimacy which was to prove a source of lifelong
satisfaction to both. The two friends corresponded frequently and freely.
“I would hardly write this sort of egotistical trash to any one but
yourself,” says Sir Walter in 1817. His correspondence with his other
acquaintances contained many references to Lady Louisa. She “unites what
are rarely found together,” he writes in a letter to Mrs. Hugh Scott of
Harden, “a perfect tact, such as few even in the higher classes attain,
with an uncommon portion of that rare quality which is called genius.”
[Gleanings from an Old Portfolio, vol. iii. p.195.] She possessed,
as he declared, the art of communicating criticism without giving pain, an
art by no means easy to acquire, and as rare to-day as it was a century
ago. No doubt Sir Walter often acted upon her advice, knowing it to be
that of a friend whose judgement could be relied on as impartial and
unprejudiced, who was not to be ranked among those “good critics,” who, as
Robert Browning says, “stamp out a poet’s hope.” Scott was certainly most
appreciative of Lady Louisa’s approval of his own works. On the back of
one of her letters to him, in which she praised his poem, the field of
Waterloo, he wrote, “This applause is worth having!” But Lady Louisa’s
criticism was too genuine to partake of the nature of flattery. She did
not agree with Goldsmith that “who peppers highest is sure to please,” and
gave Sir Walter credit for too much taste and discernment to relish what
she called “all sugar and treacle.” This is clear from a number of her
letters to the novelist, in which she lays her finger tactfully but none
the less forcibly upon the weak spots of his literary fabric. Writing on
the subject of Rob Roy in 1818, “The beginning and end,” she says,
“I am afraid I quarrel with; the mercantile part is heavy, but some part
always must be so to give what painters call relief, and beginnings
signify little. Ends signify more. Now, I fear the end of this is huddled,
as if the author were tired, and wanted to get rid of his personages as
fast as he could, knocking them on the head without mercy.” [Familiar
Letters of Walter Scott, vol. ii. p.11] All of this Sir Walter took
in good part, and was duly grateful.
He also for his part
evinced a profound interest in Lady Louisa’s literary work. In 1802 he
tells Miss Seward (perhaps the most tiresome and verbose of his friends as
well as the most prolific of his correspondents) the well-known story of
“muckle-mouthed Meg,” which he proposed to versify in the form of a Border
ballad, “in the comic manner.” Upon this very theme Lady Louisa had based
a poem entitled “Ugly Meg,” which Scott delighted in:-
“Peace to those worthy days
of old
Cast in our modern teeth so
oft,
When man was, as befits
him, bold,
And woman, as she should
be, - soft.
When worth was all that
parents weighed,
And damsels listened not to
lies,
And suitors wished a lovely
maid
To bring no dowry but her
eyes.”
The fabulous tradition
round which these verses were written was that of an ancestor of Sir
Walter, a certain Sir William Scott of Harden, who, after plundering the
estate of Sir Gideon Murray of Elibank, was captured and brought in chains
to the castle of his victorious enemy. Sir Gideon resolved to hang the
young Knight of Harden (as Sir William was called), but at the thoughtful
and typically maternal suggestion of his wife, gave the prisoner a choice
between death and marriage with Meg, the ugliest of Lady Murray’s three
unmarried and singularly unprepossessing daughter.
“Hang Harden’s Chief! A
precious jest!
A batch’lor, youthful,
comely, rich!
You with three maiden
daughters blest,
Ill-favoured as a nightmare
each.
“Unbind his hands and fetch
a friar;
I sleep not till the thing
be done.
He takes his choice, and I
acquire
The Knight of Harden for my
son.”
Meg was so exceptionally
unalluring, however, that the young knight positively declined the honour
of her hand.
“Stay! Leave me thus for
ever bound!”
The captive in a panic
cried,
Or make me turn a millwheel
round,
Ere yon hobgoblin be my
bride”;
and it was not until the rope was about his neck that
he reluctantly consented to change his mind, preferring life in the noose
of matrimony to death in a more material halter. So the knight of Harden
and “meikle-mouthed Meg” were duly wedded, and, no doubt, “lived happily
ever after.” [As James Hogg says, in another metrical account of this
story, given in his Mountain Bard:-
“So Willie took Meg to
the forest sae fair,
An’ they lived a most
happy and social life;
The longer he ken’d her,
he lo’ed her the mair,
For a prudent, a
virtuous and honourable wife.
An’ muckle gude blude
frae that union has flow’d,
An’ mony a brave fellow,
an’ mony a brave feat;
I darena just say they
are a’ mucklemou’ed,
But they rather have
still a gude luck for their meat.”
Lady Louisa treated this
story so felicitously that Scott was wont to declaim her verses to his
friends, and declared in a letter to Southey that “half his fame as a
minstrel-reciter” depended on this “very clever ballad.”
They were living, however,
in an age when it would not have been considered dignified or decorous for
an earl’s daughter to dabble in literature, far less to publish her
writings. And in one of Lady Louisa’s letters to Sir Walter she expresses
indignation at an unfounded report which was being circulated to the
effect that she was bringing out a book of verse. “It is really too hard
upon a poor snail,” she says, “to be dragged by the horns into the high
road, when it is eating nobody’s cabbages, and only desires to live at
peace in its own shell.” [Familiar Letters of Walter Scott, vol. i.
p.108.] Scott had stolen a copy of “Ugly Meg” from Lady Louisa, who
implored him to put it in the fire and thus avoid any danger of its
publication. Sir Walter, however, declined to destroy the poem, strongly
protesting his innocence of having started the rumour which had annoyed
Lady Louisa so much. “I regret,” he wrote, “I am not the Knight for whom
it is reserved to break the charm which has converted a high-born and
distressed lady into a professed authoress. I have no doubt it will soon
dissolve itself,
‘For never spell by fairy
laid,
With strong enchantment
bound a glade
Beyond the bounds of
night.’” [Ibid., p.112.]
Most of Lady Louisa’s
literary work is unfortunately hidden away in volumes privately compiled
for the eyes of relatives or descendants. Mention has already been made of
her “Introductory Anecdotes” to Lord Wharncliffe’s edition of the
Letters and Works of Lady Mary Montagu, which she illumined with the
same facile and delightful style already displayed in the Memoir entitled
“Some account of John, Duke of Argyll, and his family,” which she had
written ten years earlier. How brilliantly and charmingly she could write
may be gathered from her correspondence, much of which has fortunately
been preserved for posterity. In this age of sixpenny telegrams and
halfpenny cards, letter-writing is practically a lost art. We no longer
sit down and compose lengthy essays upon topical subjects for the
edification of absent friends. We are content to scrawl a few hasty words
on a half-sheet of notepaper instead. In return we receive a
picture-postcard adorned with a view of some foreign cathedral in which we
do not take the slightest interest, and inscribed with a few slipshod and
meaningless sentences scrawled in evident haste in an almost illegible
handwriting. But if we have little time or inclination to emulate the more
laborious methods of our ancestors, we can still appreciate the skill, the
wit, and observation which combined to make the labours of such perfect
correspondents as Byron, Edward Fitzgerald, or Madame de Sévigné a source
of endless delight to successive generations. Private letters are a sure
gauge to character, and from those of Lady Louisa we can form a fairly
just opinion of the personality of this charming woman. She was, I cannot
help thinking, one of those women whom nature has designed to be an aunt.
Not, be it said at once, that narrow, bigoted type of maiden aunt, dear to
the heart of the humorist and no one else, who lives in a suburban villa
surrounded by a menagerie of exceptionally overfed and underbred pets; but
the kindly tolerant aunt whom schoolboys adore, who does not confine her
generosity to the giving of good advice, not take every occasion of
remarking that “it was not so in her young days.” Celibacy did not
have the effect of narrowing Lady Louisa’s horizon, for no one ever had a
broader outlook upon life than she. Her sisters sought her counsel in
times of trouble; her friends ever found comfort in her ready sympathy. In
he nephews and nieces, and grand-nephews and grand-nieces, she took the
deepest interest; it was for their edification, indeed, that she undertook
that history of the Argylls, which she regarded as a true labour of love.
She was universally adored by the younger generation. Her youthful
relatives could always be sure of her interest and appreciation, and she
was ever a patient listener. Mothers must occasionally disapprove; but
aunts do not labour under the same burden of responsibility. They can be
sympathetic when perhaps they should be severe. Into her kindly ear the
“heirs of all the ages” poured the tale of their ambitions, their loves,
their troubles, and she helped them or comforted them, and sent them away
happier for her advice. Her own life was not altogether a happy one. “She
has, God knows, been tried with affliction,” said Sir Walter Scott, “and
is well acquainted with the sources from which comfort can be drawn.” Her
only serious love affair brought her nothing but misery and
disappointment. “Fye upon Cupid,” she once wrote, “the nasty little devil
has used me always ill.” [Gleanings from an Old Portfolio, vol. ii.
p.27.] She would not have been human and a woman had she never
suffered from that instinctive consciousness of failure which assails the
heart of every woman who resigns herself to perpetual spinsterhood.
She lived to an extreme age
which cannot be reached without suffering the loss of many dear friends.
Her sisters, to whom she was devoted – Lady Jane Macartney, and Caroline,
Lady Pontarlington, to whom she addressed most of her correspondence,
being her especial favourites – predeceased her. Her greatest friend, Lady
Ailesbury, [Lady Anne Rawdon, daughter of the 1st Earl of
Moira.] who humorously styled herself “Crazy Jane,” and of whom Lady
Louisa wrote that “without positive beauty, she had the charm of
countenance, grace, figure, and altogether something more captivating than
beauty itself,” died in 1813, after being one of the chief objects of her
life for many years. She survived Walter Scott by a quarter of a century.
It may truly be said that
she was never called upon to perform any acts of heroism; but has not a
great philosopher declared that to live decently at all requires heroic
thoughts? And Lady Louisa’s life was indeed worthy of the famous name she
bore. By the example of her cultivated mind she affected her own
generation profoundly. The memory of her unselfishness and the sweetness
of her disposition is still a heritage precious to her descendants. She
was of those who at heart are eternally young, an “old maid” in name
alone, with none of the asperity and intolerance usually (and wrongly)
attributed to old maids. Her outlook upon life was broad and kindly; there
was about her a human and personal touch that had in it something of the
maternal. “Blest to the closing years of that long life with the full and
unclouded use of extraordinary faculties, admired by the most eminent of
her time for her lively genius and extensive literature, she was beloved
and venerated, by such as had the privilege of approaching her nearly, for
the tenderness of her heart and the purity, piety, and humility of her
powerful mind.” From her Epitaph.]
When Lady Louisa died in
1851, at the age of ninety-four, having long outlived her own generation,
there passed away a familiar and interesting figure, truly representative
of all that was best in the social life of a bygone age, a type of that
“perfect gentlewoman” for whom, to use her own expression, she always had
an “old-fashioned partiality.” |
