Beacon Lights of History, Volume 13 - Great Writers; Dr Lord's Uncompleted Plan, Supplemented with Essays by Emerson, Macaulay, Hedge, and Mercer Adam by John Lord
page 56 of 337 (16%)
page 56 of 337 (16%)
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commendation from Dugald Stewart, the famous professor of moral
philosophy in the University of Edinburgh, and from other men of note, but obtained no recognition in England. It was during one of his rambles with his friend Ferguson to the English Lakes in 1797 that Scott met Miss Charlotte Margaret Carpenter, or Charpentier, a young French lady of notable beauty and lovely character. She had an income of about £200 a year, which, added to his earnings as an advocate, then about £150, encouraged him to offer to her his hand. For a young couple just starting in life £350 was an independence. The engagement met with no opposition from the lady's family; and in December of 1797 Scott was married, and took a modest house in Castle Street, being then twenty-six years of age. The marriage turned out to be a happy one, although _convenance_ had something to do with it. Of course, so healthy and romantic a nature as Scott's had not passed through the susceptible time of youth without a love affair. From so small a circumstance as the lending of his umbrella to a young lady (Margaret, the beautiful daughter of Sir John Belches) he enjoyed five years of affection and of what seems to have been a reasonable hope, which, however, was finally ended by the young lady's marrying Mr. William Forbes, a well-to-do banker, and later one of Scott's best friends. "Three years of dreaming and two years of waking," Scott calls it in one of his diaries, thirty years later; and his own marriage followed within a year after that of his lost love. With an income sufficient only for the necessities of life, as a married man in society Scott had not much to spare for expensive dinners, although given to hospitality. What money he could save was spent for books and travel. At twenty-six, he had visited what was most |
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