Battle of Champaubert

‘…Buonaparte fell upon the  central division of Alsufieff, at Champaubert, surrounded, defeated, and totally dispersed them, taking their artillery, and 2,000 prisoners, while the remainder of the division fled into the woods, and attempted to escape individually.  The whole force of the emperor was now interposed between the advanced guard under Sacken, and the main body under Blucher…’

The Battle  of Champaubert was fought on February 10, 1814.  Napoleon’s forces held the day in this encounter with Russian and Prussian forces.  The text above comes from Walter Scott’s “Life of Napoleon Buonaparte”.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

‘He received his first education from his father and mother and private instructors.  Later he was placed in a very good boarding-school in Moscow.  Here the boy, who had shown a passionate  fondness for books, read a great deal, especially tales of travel, and the novels of Sir Walter Scott and the works of the Russian poet, Pushkin. …’

The text above comes from Thomas Seltzer’s  introduction to Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s first novel “Poor People”.   It illustrates Walter Scott’s importance to and influence on Russian writers of the generation immediately following Scott.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky died on February 9, 1881.

Hudibras

CHAPTER  III

     Do not the hist'ries of all ages

     Relate miraculous presages

     Of strange turns in the world's affairs,

     Foreseen by astrologers, soothsayers,

     Chaldeans, learned genethliacs,

     And some that have writ almanacks?

          Hudibras.

The text above, from Samuel Butler’s Hudibras, forms the motto to chapter III of Walter Scott’s “Guy Mannering”.  All the factions of the English Civil War appear in “Hudibras”.  English poet Samuel Butler was born on February 8, 1612. 

Dickens at 200

Charles Dickens needs little introduction, but on the 200th anniversary of his birth, deserves a more lengthy post.  Dickens was 20 years old when Walter Scott died, in 1832.   His first story, “A Dinner at Poplar Walk” was published a year later.   What concerns us here, of course, is a connection between the two great authors.  One significant connection comes through Lady Magdelene DeLancey’s “A week at Waterloo”, which relates how she nursed her husband Colonel William Howe DeLancey after the Battle of Waterloo.  The connection to this work comes through Captain Basil Hall, with whom both authors corresponded, concerning De Lancey’s narrative.

The two men saw distinctly different aspects to this writing.  Scott’s interest in DeLancey’s writing stems, at least directly, from his writing of Napoleon’s life.  To Captain Hall, Scott wrote:

"My dear Captain Hall,

‘…"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 (Lady DeLancey, after she remarried), 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…'

Dickens’s reading affected him deeply, as he related in his letter to Captain Hall in 1841.  Dickens sees Defoe in Lady Delancey’s memoir.

' ..."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...'

Capability

‘I know that you, Alan, will condemn all this as bad and antiquated; for,ever since Dodsley has described the Leasowes, and talked of Brown's imitations of nature and Horace Walpole's late Essay on Gardening, you are all for simple nature--condemn walking up and down stairs in the open air and declare for wood and wilderness. But NE QUID NIMIS. I would not deface a scene of natural grandeur or beauty, by the introduction of crowded artificial decorations; yet such may, I think, be very interesting, where the situation, in its natural state, otherwise has no particular charms.’

The Brown referred to in the passage from “Redgauntlet” above, is famous landscape architect Lancelot “Capability” Brown, who died this day, February 6, 1783.  The passage seems to indicate that Scott didn’t agree with all of Brown’ s approach.  Scott delved deep into the subject of landscape gardening in his “On Landscape Gardening”.  The following passage from that essay, discusses Brown as part of the new English style of gardening that Brown’s mentor, William Kent was an originator of. 

‘…It is worth notice, that, while exploding the nuisance of graven images in the ancient and elaborate gardens, Kent, like some of the kings of Israel, though partly a reformer, could not altogether wean himself from every species of idolatry. He swept, indeed, the gardens clear of every representation of mythology, and the visitor’s admiration was no longer excited by beholding

“Statues growing that noble place in,
All heathen godesses most rare,
Homer, Plutarch, and Nebuchadnezzar,
All standing naked in the open air.”

But to make amends for their ejection, Kent and his followers had temples, obelisks, and gazabos of every description in the park, all stuck about on their respective high places, with as little meaning, and at least as little pretension to propriety, as the horticultural Pantheon which had been turned out of doors.

The taste for this species of simplicity spread far and wide. Browne, the successor of Kent, followed in his footsteps; but his conceptions, to judge from the piece of artificial water at Blenheim (formed, we believe, chiefly to blunt the point of an ill-natured epigram,) were more magnificent than those of his predecessor. We cannot, however, suppose old Father Thames so irritable as this celebrated professor intimated, when he declared that the river would never forgive him for having given him so formidable a rival.

The school of spade and mattock flourished the more, as it was a thriving occupation, when the projector was retained to superintend his improvements — which seldom failed to include some forcible alteration on the face of nature. The vanity of some capability-men dictated those violent changes which were recommended chiefly by the cupidity of others. While the higher-feeling class were desirous, by the introduction of a lake, the filling up a hollow, or the elevation of a knoll, to show to all the world that Mr. — – had laid out those grounds; the meaner brothers of the trade were covetous of sharing the very considerable sums which must be expended in making such alterations. ..’

General Paoli

James Boswell befriended General Pasquale Paoli on a visit to Corsica, later making Paoli famous throughout all Europe, by publishing his “An Account of Corsica” (1768).  Paoli was perhaps one of the more honorable of Boswell’s companions, many of which were a point of concern for Boswell’s strict father.  An account of the elder Lord Auchinleck’s feelings in this regard is taken from John Gibson Lockhart’s “Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott”.

‘The following notices of Boswell himself, and his father, Lord Auchinleck, may be taken as literal transcripts from Scott’s Table-Talk:—

….“Old Lord Auchinleck was an able lawyer, a good scholar, after the manner of Scotland, and highly valued his own advantages as a man of good estate and ancient family; and, moreover, he was a strict Presbyterian and Whig of the old Scottish cast. This did not prevent his being a terribly proud aristocrat; and great was the contempt he entertained and expressed for his son James, for the nature of his friendship, and the character of the personages of whom he was engoué one after another. ‘There’s nae hope for Jamie, mon,’ he said to a friend. ‘Jamie is gane clean gyte. What do you think, mon? He’s done wi’ Paoli—he’s off wi’ the land louping scoundrel of a Corsican; and whose tail do you think he has pinned himself to now, mon?’ Here the old judge summoned up a sneer of most sovereign contempt. ‘A dominie, mon—an auld dominie! he keeped a schule, and caud it an acaadamy.’…’

Pasquale Paoli died on February 5^th, 1807.

Crown of Scotland

A Royal Commission had been issued in 1794 authorising certain persons to enter the jewel room in the Castle of Edinburgh, and by breaking the door if necessary, in order to ascertain whether the historical conjecture was true that the Crown of Scotland and its pertinent were there.  But that attempt to discover them had failed; because after breaking the lock of the door, a punctilious commissioner doubted whether their warrant sanctioned their also using force against a chest that they found within.  This obstacle was suggested, I have heard, by Blair the Solicitor-General; and it being formidable, the chest was left untouched, the outer door was relocked, and the commissioners retired.  After another pause of twenty-four years, the experiment was renewed by a better instructed Commission, and on the 4^th of February 1818 the Commissioners proceeded with due pomp to their work.  They unlocked the door and opened the chest.  And there, as Thomas Thomson had told them, they found the Regalia sleeping beneath the dust that had been gathering around them ever since the Union.  It was a hazy evening, about four o’clock, when a shot from the Castle and a cheer from a regiment drawn up on the Castle Hill announced to the people, that the Crown of heir old kings was discovered. ..John Kemble asked Scott If the Crown was not splendid?  “The last time that I saw you as Macbeth you had a much grander one.”

The text above, including the quote of Walter Scott, comes from Lord Henry Cockburn’s “Memorials of his Time”.