SCOTT’S LAST DAYS

Hokitika Guardian, 8 November 1930, Page 7

SCOTT’S LAST DAYS

EFFORT TO PAY OFF DEBT. WONDERFUL FEAT. LONDON, September 4. Mr Hugh Walpole will unveil on September 26 a tablet on the site oi the old St. James’s Hotel in Jermyn Street, where, in a second-floor back room, Sir Walter Scott spent his last days in London.

Scott’s courageous end really began when, at the age of fhty-five, he was faced with a debt of about £120,000. He refused all aid, and said: “My right hand shall pay all.” He could have gone into the bankruptcy court, but he would not. In six years he performed the wonderful feat of repaying half the money—but in doing so he killed himself.

In 1831, Scott became so ill that he agreed to go for a Mediterranean voyage, and the Government placed a fHgate at his disposal. On the voyage he began a new novel, “The Knights of Malta,” which was never published, though the manuscript was recently sold to go to America. All the time Scott had been longing to be home—at Abbotsford, In Germany he was going to call on Goethe, but before he got there he heard that Goethe had died.

On June 13, 1832, Scott was brought back to London. "For about three weeks he lay in a kind ol waking dream, so exhausted and ill that only members of his family and one or two very intimate friends saw him,” said Mr King, the critic. “He put out his hand to greet one of them—the right band that had written so many hundreds of thousands of words—but he had not strength enough to hold it up. Scott longed to see once again his beloved Tweedsidc, his own plantations, and to caress his favourite dogs; so he was taken on his last journey. He saw them all again—and two months later he was dead.”

Scott on his travels—he visited London thirteen times—was immensely impressed by the rapidity of transport. In “The Heart of Midlothian” he speaks of “ancient, slow and sure modes of conveyance that are now unknown ; mail coach races against mail coach, and high-flyer against high-flyer, through the most remote districts of Britain. And in our village 'alone three post-coaches and four coaches, with men armed, and in scarlet cassocks, thunder through the streets each day. The ancient vehicle,” he adds, “used to settle down quietly like a ship scuttled and left to sink by the gradual influx of the waters, while the modern is smashed to . pieces bv t'he velocity of the same vessel hurled against breakers, ol‘, rather, with the fury of a bomb bursting at the conclusion of its career through the air.”