I im M ''m h I. M^^ FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT Breathes there the man, with soul so dead. Who never to himseK hath said, This is my own, my native land ! Whose heart hath ne'er within him burn'd. As home his footsteps he hath turn'd . . ." Scott. mm_ ABBOTSFORD. SOUTH FRONT, FACING THE GARDENS From a water-colour drawing by TOM SCOTT, R.S.A. I have seen much, but nothing like my ain house." SCOTT. FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT BY W. S. CROCKETT MINISTER OF TWEEDSMUIR ; AUTHOR OF "in PRAISE OF TWEED,"" THE SCOTT COUNTRY," " ACBOTSFORD," " IN THE BORDER COUNTRY," ETC., ETC. ILLUSTRATIONS BY TOM SCOTT, R.S.A. PHILADELPHIA GEORGE W. JACOBS & CO. PUBLISHERS hAThJ TO THE JdEMORY OF air MOTHER 9Cir^. ^^5408 PREFACE The chapters that follow are biographi- cal and topographical. There is no need for a new Life of Scott ; and the present little volume makes no claim to be re- garded as such. It is written chiefly for those who desire to have recorded, vdthin brief space, the salient features respect- ing Sir Walter and his Land. Some fresh facts will be found here and there. The proofs have been read by my friend Mr Cuthbert Hadden. W. S. CROCKETT. The Manse, TWfiEDSMUIR, October 1907. CONTENTS OHAP. PAOK 1. WALTER SCOTT'S LAND 1 2. MARRIAGE AND "THE MINSTRELSY" . . 8 3. ASHESTIEL AND THE VERSE ROMANCES . 63 4. ABBOTSFORD 79 5. FOOTPRINTS OF WAVERLEY . . . .102 6. " FAIR MELROSE " 146 7. THE LAST PHASE 175 8. SCOTT TO-DAY 202 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Reproduced from water-colour drcmings painted specially for this T»ork by TOM SCOTT. R.S.A. Abbotsford, South Front ... Frontispiece Sandyknowe Tower .... Facing page 22 Yarrow "44 Newark "72 Abbotsford, North Front, facing the Tweed " 86 Jedburgh Abbey "152 Melrose Abbey "164 St. Mary's Loch "170 Dryburgh Abbey "198 FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT CHAPTER I WALTER SCOTT'S LAND To any reader of the Romances, Walter Scott's Land cannot be restricted to that comparatively small stretch of country bounded on one side by the Liberties of Berwick, on the other by the Solway Moss, and known to history as the Scottish Bor- der. That would be a clearly impossible limit. As we shall see, however, it has a perfectly legitimate claim to be called "the Scott Country," and to be so regarded in the popular interpretation of the phrase. For in one crowning sense it is Sir Walter's Land^the land of his nativity; the land consecrated by his life, his herculean lab- ours, his joys, and his sorrows. At its widest, nevertheless, Walter Scott's 1 1 FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT Land must obviously extend far away be- yond the Tweed and the Border Marches — far from the country which gave him birth. What region has not been touched by his wizard spell ? If we make his writings — the sphere of his imagination — the gauge of area, we shall have a singularly vast field to traverse. Not so easy, then, to define what is meant by Walter Scott's Land ! Take the Scottish romances alone, and the whole of North Britain is embraced in the term. From that "wild hyperborean isle," sacred to Noma of the Fitful Head, sacred to Minna and Brenda, those ever -winsome maidens of The Ph^afe, down to the arena of Redgauntlet and Guy Mannering by the Solway Firth, there is hardly a tract of Scotland but owes something to the genius of the greatest of the Scots. From Ben- becula among " the wind-swept Hebrides " to St Abb's in the east, one can never miss the glamour ie of a land of which it has been said that the poet has sung, and the roman- cist has wandered, as of old the " shenach- WALTER SCOTT'S LAND ies," or Gaelic story-tellers, wandered — love in their hearts, a light in their eyes, an old tale on their lips. But if the range of genius is to delimit the Country of Sir Walter, not all the inspir- ation of " his own, his native land " were sufficient for such a Master. True to the old moss -trooping traditions, we should find ourselves making sundry "raids" a- cross the Border: into the central England oilvanhoe, for instance; into the Warwick- shire of Ke7iihvorth — the richest of all the English counties in literary association ; into the Derbyshire of Peveril of the Peak; into the Oxfordshire of Woodstock, and the fascinating London of The Fortunes of Nigel. Nor would one omit the Welsh Borderland of The Betrothed, or the Isle of Man, where Julian Peveril " opened out his whole heart" to the beautiful Alice Bridgenorth. Neither, from the stand- point of our author's productiveness, does this terminate the scope of his Country. Scott's genius was of too keen and imagin- FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT ative a nature to be confined to the coasts of his native Britain. He must needs sail the seas and wander in sunnier chmes, ad- venturous-wise, ^th Quentin Durward in fair Provence and Aix, the old troubadour capital; with the knights of The Talisman in Syria and the Holy Land ; with pretty Menie Gray, the heroine of The Surgeons Daughter, in far-away Mysore ; with Anne of Geier stein in Switzerland and the Rhine; with Don Roderick in Spain ; with Count Robert of Paris in Constantinople. Italy, that rich land of romance, Sir Walter left practically untouched, save for the never- to-be-published 77 Bizarro, a product of his djdng pen, written at Naples. It is curious, too, that Ireland has so small a place in the work of one who, as he tells us, drew his early inspiration as a writer of fiction from Miss Edgeworth, the novelist of Castle Rackrent and The Absentee. Nor, if we ex- cept Major Bridgenorth's reminiscences of New England life, in Peveril of the Peak, does America seem to have made any ap- 4 WALTER SCOTT'S LAND peal to Scott; though it can scarcely be for- gotten that several of his lifelong friends were Americans, At its widest, therefore (not to further labour the point), Walter Scott's Land will carry us from the Stone of Hoy to the Golden Horn, — from the "glittering and resolute streams of Tweed" to the brown and turbid waters of the Jor- dan, comprising, in part at least, the older Continents of Europe and Asia. But the true Scott-Land has naturally a more restricted area. The former is too large a space for the homage of the heart. There must be a more personal definition — one which can be grasped with a con- scious affection. What is peculiarly the Country of Sir Walter must be taken to be that where the greater part of his outward and actual as well as his imaginative life was passed, the region which lay closest to his heart and memory; which he knew best and loved most; where life's truest joys first came to him; the scene of his marvellous successes and of his overwhel- 5 FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT ming reverses ; the country where, single- handed, braver fight was never fought, and where, like the dead Douglas, fallen, but not worsted, he sleeps well after the long, hard day. That must always be Walter Scott's Land as it touches the human heart. We have already spoken of this region as that which comes under the designation of the Scottish Border, comprising, to put it simply, the romantic valley of the Tweed and its tributaries. This, at all events, is claimed as the Border district in its liter- ary, and consequently in its Scott sense. But, for our present purpose, let us include Edinburgh and Lasswade also, and the mapping out of Walter Scott's Land, in the character in which we are to deal with it, will be complete. Here centre the chief Scott associations, twined round such names as Sandyknowe, Kelso, Ashestiel, Abbotsford, Yarrow, Melrose, Dryburgh, and many others. What memories does the mere mention of them conjure up in the mind of every 6 WALTER SCOTT'S LAND lover of Sir Walter! These names were constantly upon his own lips ; nor did the world contain more hallowed spots than they were to him all his life long. CHAPTER II MARRIAGE AND "THE MINSTRELSY" What has been called — and probably is — the greatest event in the history of Edin- burgh — the birth of Walter Scott — took place a hundred and thirty-six years ago this summer of 1907. It is curious to think of one still living,^ who for more than a quarter of a century was Scott's contem- porary, who conversed with him, who can remember Abbotsf ord in the making, who heard the conflict of talk about Waverley, and who saw Scott's funeral. Of recent links with Scott which the newspapers have been chronicling from time to time, this is certainly the most remarkable. For * James Bell, Galashiels — a native of Earlston, b. 1804, At the moment of writing the death is announced of the last survivor — George Groal, Edinburgh — of those who were present at the famous Theatrical Fund Dinner in 1827, when Scott avowed himself " the total and undivided author "of the Waverley Novels. Mr Croal was born in 1811. 8 MARRIAGE AND "THE MINSTRELSY" no other now living can recall the origin- al Abbotsford — before the place passed into Scott's hands, as far back as 1811 — when our centenarian was a boy of seven. It would be interesting and instructive to have the collected reminiscences of persons alive at the beginning of the twentieth century who had seen Scott, or better still, who had spoken to him. Such memories must soon be extinct altogether. One hardly needs to ask what were Scott's feelings towards Edinburgh. It was his "own romantic town," the "pearl of cities." Its long proud history lay at his fingers' ends, he said. The glamour of its quaint streets, haunted by the ghosts of centuries, and its "solemn but seductive beauty," continued with him from youth to age, strangely heightened during his last illness, when he was constantly recal- ling sights and scenes in the High Street and Canongate, every ancient building of which none knew so well as he. There is no better word-picture of Edinburgh (a 9 FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT Turner in verse) than that of Marmion, canto iv. — the description of the Blackford Hill panorama, most dear to Scott — dear to Edinburgh lovers everywhere: — *' Still on the spot Lord Marmion stay'd, For fairer scene he ne'er surveyed. . . . The wandering eye could o'er it go, And mark the distant city glow With gloomy splendour red ; For on the smoke-wreaths, huge and slow, That round her sable turrets flow. The morning beams were shed, And tinged them with a lustre proud, Like that which streaks a thunder-cloud. Such dusky grandeur clothed the height Where the huge Castle holds its state, And all the steep slope down, Whose ridgy back heaves to the sky. Piled deep and massy, close and high. Mine own romantic town ! " All through, in the Waverleys and verse- romances, there are many kindly allusions to the city of his dreams and desires. In the senseofbeingproprietor, Scott was an Edin- burgh citizen for all but thirty years, and from the publication of Waverleyhe was the city's most notable figure. As he walked 10 MARRIAGE AND " THE MINSTRELSY " Edinburgh's streets, which he was fond of doing, limping his way home from the Par- liament House to " dear 39 " Castle Street (the city's truest memorial, notwithstand- ing Kemp's masterpiece),many a head must have turned to look at him, to admire his otherwise robust and manly form. Many a ^whisper to child or stranger must have followed him, "See, that is Sir Walter Scott!" Many there must have been to remember and tell long afterwards how they had seen the "Author of Waverley" at his best. Scott moved with absolute freedom up the High Street, and down the Mound, or along Princes Street, pausing at the bookshops, or the Clubs, or at the houses of his friends. He was naturally one of the "sights" of the Capital, but never was he molested, nor did anything occur to mar the good feeling which knit him to the mass of his fellow-citizens. For Edin- burgh had long taken Scott to its heart, and his own unbounded affection for the place of his birth, where practically the 11 FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT whole of his active Kfe was spent, is a world's possession. It was from Edinburgh that he drew much of the inspiration of Waverley and its compeers. Whilst fur- nishing him with no end of romantic ma- terial, the city itself and its surroundings became the arena of scenes the most un- forgettable in Scottish fiction. At Edin- burgh, Scott lived (humbly) in the glow of a literary success that has never been equalled. And here, too, had he experience of the cloudy and dark day. Does any one marvel that the "grey metropolis of the North" cherishes, as it does, the name of its "chief est scribe and recorder"? For was he not, and is he not, out of all sight, the noblest of its sons, the most chivalrous Scot of them all ? To speak of Edinburgh as "Sir Walter's Town" is to confer a higher honour than all its kings, or states men, or wise men of the past have been able to bestow upon it. For, all the world over, how do the magic memories of Edinburgh and of Scott go wandering hand in hand ! 12 MARRIAGE AND " THE MINSTRELSY " Literally in the heart of the Old Town — under the shadow of St Giles', it may be said — Scott first saw the light. The Edinburgh of that epoch differed considerably from its modern queenly representative. It was still the old, romantic, mediaeval city, hav- ing the High Street running up from Holyrood to the Castle for its principal thoroughfare — a street probably unmatch- ed in Europe for the number and character of its historical associations. One of Scott's favourite haunts as boy and man, it is fre- quently sketched in the poems and novels. " How often have I seen him," says Lock- hart, " go a long way round about rather than miss the opportunity of passing through some of the quaint windings of the ancient city. His coachman knew him too well to move at a Jehu's pace amidst such scenes. No funeral hearse crept more leisurely than did his landau up the Canon- gate, and not a queer, tottering gable but recalled to him some long-buried memory of splendour or of bloodshed." On a lower 13 FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT level, and parallel to the High Street, runs the Cowgate, of which Alexander Alexius, Canon of St Andrews, writing in 1532, says that it contains " the palaces belonging to the princes of the realm, where there is nothing mean or rustic, but all magnifi- cent," — a humiliating reflection on the present state of matters. Branching off the Cowgate were a number of smaller streets or alleys, one of which, from being the chief approach to the Town's College, was designated the College Wynd. What little is left of it has been rechristened Guthrie Street, from that prince of home- missionaries, Dr Thomas Guthrie, much of whose noble slum w^ork was carried on in this locality. A plain four-storeyed house standing at the Wynd-head (to the east), and immediately facing the great gateway of the College, was the birthplace of Scott, who was born, it is stated, under the same roof as the celebrated Lord Henderland, and opposite the residence of Dr Joseph Black, the chemist. Oliver Goldsmith had 14 MARRIAGE AND "THE MINSTRELSY" his lodging in the College Wynd when studying medicine at Edinburgh in 1752, and it was through this street that Boswell and Principal Robertson conducted Dr Johnson on his visit to the University, when Scott was a baby. It is many years since the last of the old College Wynd buildings disappeared, and all that remains to mark the site (as nearly as possible) of Scott's birth-house is a neat tablet in the wall of No. 8 Chambers Street (erected by the Town Council), and recording the fact that — NEAR THIS SPOT STOOD THE HOUSE IN WHICH SIR WALTER SCOTT WAS BORN 15TH AUGUST 1771 The College Wynd seems to have been a somewhat unfortunate habitat for the Scott family ; at least six (seven is Scott's 15 FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT own statement) of its members had died in infancy, and the probability is that Scott himself would have succumbed had he re- mained in what was fast becoming an un- desirable part of the city. The rate of infant mortality appears to have been ab- normally high about this period, the real cause of the trouble being, it was believed, the close and damp character of the nurser- ies, which, in the lofty old mansions of the Canongate, the College Wynd, and other parts, were, as a rule, relegated to the sunk floors below the level of the street. And the era of fresh air and scientific drainage was not yet ! The time was therefore ripe for a great change. So at Scott's birth Edinburgh was in the transition stage be- tween the old and the new eras. On what is now Princes Street some building had been begun, and the North Bridge, which was to connect the two wings of the city, was finished in 1772. There were improve- ments in the Old Town also, George Square being built about this time. It was to 16 MARRIAGE AND "THE MINSTRELSY" Brown's Square, part of which may still be seen at the tof) of Chambers Street, that, as we read in Redgauntlet, the Fairfords removed, Alan relating to his friend Darsie Latimer how " the leaving of his old apart- ments in the Luckenbooths was to him [Fairford senior] like divorcing the soul from the body." As a matter of fact, how- ever, it was to George Square — to No. 25 — that Saunders Fairford (Scott's father un- der a thin disguise) flitted a year or two following the birth of Scott, who was, by the way, the ninth child of the family and the second Walter, the first having died in 1766. Meantime the infant of the College Wynd was like to go the way of his prede- cessors. He had barely reached his second year when a touch of the hereditary mal- ady (paralysis) made its appearance. A- mong other things it was discovered that he had lost the use of his right leg, to re- cover which not all the skill of the College specialists was of avail. On their advice 2 17 FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT it was agreed to send the child to the coun- try, in the hope that the open air and the natural exertion of his limbs might effect a cure. He was taken accordingly to his grandfather's farm at Sandyknowe, near Smailholni, in Eoxburghshire — the very spot for such as he. Here, after a year or two, to use his own words, "I, who in a city had probably been condemned to hope- less and helpless decrepitude, was now a healthy, high-spirited, and, my lameness apart, a sturdy child — noyi shie diis ani- mosus infans." But Sandyknowe did more than set him on his legs again. He was never quite cured of his lameness, to be sure. Like one of his ancestors, he was Walter the Lamiter for life, yet otherrvise he was anything but lame. Carlyle's statement that "no sound- er piece of British manhood was put to- gether in that eighteenth century of Time"' owes its possibility to the fortunate sug- gestion of Sandyknowe, which was the very making of him physically and ment- is ' MARRIAGE AND "THE MINSTRELSY" ally. He was sent to Sandy knowe "to die," he said years afterwards. But for that dolesome anticipation we might not have had the living, full-blooded, full-brained Scott at all. There has been some useless talk about Scott's "unfortunate" lameness. Well, but for his lameness very likely we should have had Scott the soldier, fighting his way under Wellington in the Napole- onic Wars, instead of Scott the hardly less intrepid story-teller — surely the happier alternative of the two. It is to this lucky accident of the lameness that we owe Mar- mion and Waverley, just as Spain is in- debted to the wound which disabled Cer- vantes for the conception of the immortal Don Quixote. It was at Sandyknowe that Scott awoke to the first consciousness of existence — swathed in the skin of a newly-slain sheep, and crawling along the floor after a watch dangled by his kinsman. Sir George Mak- dougall of Makerstoun. All sorts of nos- trums were suggested as a cure, but noth- 19 FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT ing did him so much good as being carried out to the hillside and allowed the free scope of his limbs — to kick and roll as he liked on the green sward, with the wonder- ing sheep and lambs nibbling beside him. He had the most faithful of attendants in auld Sandy Ormiston, the shepherd, or "cow-bailie," as Lockhart styles him — a veritable Tom Purdie of his boyhood, to whom the world owes more than it wots of. For was it not pretty much through the medium of this " aged hind " that the Muse of Poetry and Romance found Scott and claimed him for her own ? " Here was poetic impulse given By the green hill and clear blue heaven." Sandyknowe was truly "meet nurse for a poetic child," "a sweet-tempered bairn," "a darling with all about the house." An at- mosphere of romance pervaded the place. How otherwise could it be with the prox- imity of so many spots famous in Border story, and not least the overshadowing presence of that stern old f ortlet of Smail- 20 MARRIAGE AND "THE MINSTRELSY" holm (or Sandyknowe), looking out, the long years through, " Over Tweed's fair flood and Mertoun's wood And all down Teviotdale " — over the wide plain and the blue hills that had seen so many battles and Border frays? Let us remember also the happy fellowships of the farm-house — his grandparents, Ro- bert Scott and Barbara Haliburton, and his "kind and affectionate Aunt Janet," all of whose share in the "making" of the future Minstrel can never be forgotten. It was Aunt Janet who taught him to "read braw- ly," to spout Hardyknute (not for the deav- ing of the parish minister, however), and to "spell" the lines of old Satchells' rhym- ing True History of several Honourable Farnilies of the Right Honourable Name of Scot, one of the first books he ever attempt- ed — in his fourth year no less. Never was there a clearer case of environment (and heredity) shaping a man's future. One hes- itates to think how easily might any other surrounding have given us an altogether 21 FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT different Scott, as he himself suggests! There is, at all events, no question that in Sandyknowe we have the fons et origo of the Minstrelsy and the best of the verse- romances. Scott's attachment to the place is seen in his letters and conversations, and in his frequent visits in after life, above all in the vs^ell-known lines in the Intro- duction to the third canto of Marmion — a record and an apologia which must be quoted, hackneyed though it is : — " Thus while I ape the measure wild Of tales that charm'd me yet a child, Rude though they be, stiU with the cliime Return the thoughts of early time ; And feelings, roused in life's first day, Glow in the line, and prompt the lay. Then rise those crags, that mountain tower. Which charm'd my fancy's wakening hour. It was a barren scene, and wild, Where naked cUfTs were rudely piled ; But ever and anon between Lay velvet tufts of loveliest green ; And well the lonely infant knew Recesses where the wall-flower grew, And honey-suckle loved to crawl Up the low crag and ruin'd waU. 22 SANDY KNO WE TOWER From a water-colour drawing by TOM SCOTT, U.S.A. Then rise those crags, that mountain tower Which charm' d my fancy's wakening hour. Though no broad river swept along. To claim, perchance, heroic son^ ; Though sigh'd no graves in summer gale, To prompt of love a softer tale ; Though scarce a pu?iy streamlet's speed Claim' d homage from a shepherds reed ; Yet was poetic impulse given By the green hill and clear blue heaven." SCOTT. MARRIAGE AND "THE MINSTRELSY" I deem'd such nooks the sweetest shade The sun in all its round survey 'd ; And still I thought that shatter'd tower The mightiest work of human power ; And marvell'd as the aged hind With some strange tale hewitch'd my mind. Of forayers, who, with headlong force, Down from that strength had spurr'd their horse, Their southern rapine to renew. Far in the distant Cheviots blue, And, home returning, fill'd the hall With revel, wassel-rout, and brawl. Methought that still with trump and clang The gateway's broken arches rang ; Methought grim features, seam'd with scars, Glar'd through the window's rusty bars, And ever, by the winter hearth, Old tales I heard of woe or mti-th, Of lovers' shghts, of ladies' charms, Of witches' spells, of warriors' arms ; Of patriot battles, won of old By Wallace wight and Bruce the bold ; Of later fields of feud and fight When, pouring from their Highland height. The Scottish clans, in headlong sway, Had swept the scarlet ranks away." That Scott should catch the afflatus of the Border Country was in the fitness of things. The Border had been the home- 23 FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT laud of his ancestors for ininiemorial gen- erations. There was scarcely one of its families with which he could not count kin, from Buccleuch himself to the " bauld Rutherfords," the Merse Swintons, the Haliburtons, the Makdougalls, and others. "There are few in Scotland under the titled nobility," says Lockhart, "who could trace their blood to so many stocks of historical distinction." Genealogically, Scott was the son of a grandson of the first Scott of Rae- burn, who came from the third Scott of Harden, who came from a younger son of the Scotts of Sinton, who came from the Bold Buccleuch. His greatest pride was the Harden pedigree, which took him back to the indomitable Auld Wat, the most picturesque figure of Border balladry, and his fair dame, no less famous, the "Flower of Yarrow," names which, as he says, he "made to ring in many a ditty." When the last bullock driven from the English pastures was consumed, it was Mary Scott who set before the assembled guests a pair 24 MARRIAGE AND "THE MINSTRELSY" of clean spurs as a broad hint that they must bestir themselves if they would eat. Midway between Auld Wat's day and his own, lived "Beardie," that dour, unbend- ing Jacobite, whose enthusiasm for an ill- fated cause lost him his lands and won the cognomen by which posterity best remem- bers him, from the mad resolve never to cut his beard (like Dalziel of Binns) till the Stuarts were restored. He reminds us of the Highlander who, having shaken hands with Prince Charlie, exclaimed, "Whilst I live, this hand of mine will never touch water." It was Beardie's second son — Scott's grandfather — a "stickit" sailor, who blossomed into the Sandyknowe tacksman, and whose eldest son, Walter Scott, an Edinburgh Writer to the Signet, became the father of our Sir Walter. On his mother's side — a Rutherford — he had for great-grandfather the first minister of Yarrow after the Revolution ; for grand- father, John Rutherford, Professor of the Practice of Medicine at Edinburgh; and FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT for mother, the clever and kindly, if not particularly comely, Anne Rutherford. Though Sandyknowe stands for so much in the career of Scott, one fears that the place is too little regarded in these days of shrine-hunting. How many, for instance, can locate the scene of that delightful picture just quoted? The spot is off the beaten track, to be sure, but none too far, for Melrose is only seven miles away, Kel- so six, and Earlston a like distance, and from all these towns driving facilities are plentiful. Sandyknowe, Scott's cradling- ground in the sphere of poetry, waits to be popularised, and we hope to see some- thing done before long. Assuredly, one cannot be said to know the Scott-Land if the scenery of some of the best of the for- mative years be overlooked. For here Scott lived (a twelvemonth excepted) from his third to his eighth year, a period that means a great deal in the life of a boy, es- pecially a boy of Scott's stamp. The origin- al farm-house — the "thatched mansion" 26 MARRIAGE AND "THE MINSTRELSY" of 3Iarmio7i — has long since disappeared. Tradition points to its site (it was a mere cottage) at the north-east end of the mod- ern steading, but nothing remains to show that the site had ever been occupied by a dwelling. The landscape is virtually the same, with a greater woodland profusion perhaps. Here is the lochan of The Abbot, crowned by the crags and the old grey peel (scene of the Eve of St John) which has withstood the assaults and storms of prob- ably seven hundred years, and is still in tolerable preservation — is thought, indeed, to be the most perfect relic of a feudal building in the South of Scotland. Visits to Bath "for the waters," and to Prestonpans " for sea-bathing," come with- in the Sandyknowe period. A relic of the Bath visit is the first extant portrait of Scott — the ivory miniature still to be seen in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, of which that at Abbotsf ord is a replica. It is interesting to note the characteristic- ally tall forehead, the frank and eager air, 27 FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT and the profile, " wonderfully like what it was to the last," says Lockhart. At Pres- tonpans he made the acquaintance of a veteran, the original of the deathless Dal- getty, and of George Constable, in part the prototype of Monkbarns in The Antiquary, " the first person who told me about Fal- staff and Hotspur." The Sandyknowe homestead was now broken up by the death of his grandfather, old Mrs Scott and her daughter removing to Kelso, to a house close by the Tweed and Kelso Bridge, known to-day as Waver- ley Lodge. He was now considered well enough to live with his father at George Square, which was his settled residence for the next nineteen years. Homer he read at home (in Pope's version) along with the Border ballads and Allan Ramsay's Ever- green, and on Sundays, "to relieve the gloom of one dull sermon succeeding on another," Bunyan's Pilgrim and Gessner's Death ofAbeU In October 1778 he entered ^ It is worth noting that Salomon Gessner's (German j)as- 28 MARRIAGE AND " THE MINSTRELSY " the old Edinburgh High School (the old City Hospital). Luke Eraser was his first preceptor, and by and by he passed into the hands of the Rector, Dr Adam the Latinist. He speaks of himself as " glanc- ing like a meteor from the bottom to the top of the form." But his verse transla- tions (of Horace and Virgil) were picked out for praise, and Dr Adam called him " the historian of the class," showing that Scott during his schooldays was not the dunce of a popular misconception. And withal, he was " a bonnie f echter," daring the "kittle nine-steps" on the narrow ledge of the Castle Rock, helping to " man the Cowgate Port" in snowball fights, and taking part in the frequent "bickers" a- gainst the town boys, which he describes in the anecdote of Green-breeks. A turn of ill- health sent him to Kelso in 1783, where, at his aunt's, and at Rosebank, the home of a bachelor seafaring uncle, Captain Robert toral poet) Death of Abel (Tod Abels), a kind of heroic prose poem, first published in 1758, was reprinted at Kelso in 1783 29 FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT Scott, much of his boyhood was spent. We see the "making" of him at Kelso, "the most beautiful, if not the most romantic, village in Scotland." The meeting of two such rivers as Tweed and Teviot, both fa- mous in song ; the Abbey ruins ; the re- mains of Roxburgh Castle; the palatial Floors Castle ; and several other spots of note in the neighbourhood, are still Kelso's chief attractions. But it must be said that the beauty of the place has been vastly heightened since Scott's halcyon boyhood. At the Kelso Grammar School (adjoining the Abbey, and long demolished) Scott learned more Latin; was usher to that para- gon of Scots dominies, Lancelot Whale; met James and John Ballantyne, and became story-teller in embryo. From Kelso the first of the " raids " (to Norham, Flodden, Otter- burn, etc.) must also be dated, as well as the inception of the Minstrelsy, following that historic perusal of Percy's Reliques, " when the summer day sped onward so fast that, notw^ithstanding the sharp appetite of thir- 30 MARRIAGE AND "THE MINSTRELSY" teen, I forgot the hour of dinner, was sought for with anxiety, and was found still en- tranced in my intellectual banquet." In his thirteenth year Scott matriculated at the College of Edinburgh. At fifteen he was in- dentured to his father, and " entered upon the dry and barren wilderness of forms and conveyances." At sixteen he saw the High- lands for the first time, and met Stuart of Invernahyle, who had measured swords with Rob Roy, and been " out " with Mar and with "Chairlie." It was about this time, too, that he had his memorable inter- view with Burns at Sciennes Hill House (still standing at Braid Place, Edinburgh). "I saw him one day," he writes, "at the late venerable Professor Ferguson's, where there were several gentlemen of literary reputation, among whom I remember the celebrated Mr Dugald Stewart. Of course we youngsters [young Adam Ferguson, his bosom friend, was the other] sat silent, looked and listened. The only thing I re- member which was remarkable in Burns's 3] FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT manner was the effect produced upon him by a print of Bunbury's, representing a soldier lying dead on the snow, his dog sitting in misery on the one side, on the other his widow, with a child in her arms. These lines were written beneath : — " Cold on Canadian Hills, or Minden plain, Perhaps ye Parent wept her Soldier Slain ; Bent o'er her Babe, her Ej-es dissolved in dew, The big drops mingling with the Millc he drew. Sad MournfnU presage of his future years The Child of Misery Baptized in tears." ^ Burns seemed much affected by the print, or rather the ideas which it suggested to his mind. He actually shed tears. He asked whose the lines were, and it chanced that ^ This identical print — a little brown daub entitled "Afflic- tion " — is now to be seen in the Museum of the Chambers Institution at Peebles. Sir Adam Ferguson presented it to Robert Chambers, on whose death it passed to his brother William, and was in turn bequeathed by him to the Institute which he founded in his native town. The lines quoted above are exactly as they stand on the picture. It will be seen that they vary slightly from the version given in every bio- graphy of Scott. John Langhorne, curiously, wrote his poem The Country Justice at the request of a Richard Burn. Bunbury's print, published by W. Dickinson, London, bears the date 1783, and the name Langhorne, oddly enough, ap- pears — though in smaller type — as the author of the stanza. 32 MARRIAGE AND "THE MINSTRELSY ^^ nobody but myself remembered that they occur in a half -forgotten poem of Lang- horne's, called by the unpromising title of ' The Justice of the Peace.' I whispered my information to a friend present, who men- tioned it to Burns, who rewarded me with a look and a word, which, though of mere civility, I then received, and still recollect, with very great pleasure." It is stated that the "word" which Scott suppressed was, "You'll be a man yet, sir!" They never met again, though, casually, Scott saw Burns examining a bookstall in Parliament Square. And, according to Constable, who spent an evening with Burns in 1792, the bard told him how he "had been struck with the wonderful powers of young Scott, and prognosticated his future greatness." On the 11th of July 1792 (before he had completed his twenty-first year), along with his friend Will Clerk, he was — not credit- less — called to the Bar, or, more technically, 33 3 FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT admitted a member of the Faculty of Ad- vocates. At nineteen Scott was in love. Scott's love-making belongs unquestionably to the most romantic period of his life. We can- not, however, stay to discuss the pros and cons of the affair. Suffice it to say that for at least six years he courted (somewhat bashfully) Miss Williamina (not Margaret, as Lockhart has it in the abridged Life) Belsches, with every good prospect, as he imagined, until suddenly his proposals were rejected. The lady soon afterwards married William Forbes, Younger of Pitsligo.^ The secret of her strangely capricious treatment of Scott has never been revealed. Thereisno * Miss Belsches (b. Oct. 1776) was the only child of Sir John Wishart Belsches (afterwards, by Royal licence, Stuart), Bart., of Fettercairn, by his marriage with Lady Jane Leslie, eldest daughter of the sixth Earl of Leven and Melville. Sir William Stuart Forbes, Bart., of Pitsligo and Fettercairn, was the son of Sir William, the celebrated Scottish banker, and biographer of Beattie the Minstrel. John Hay Forbes, Lord Medwyn,was his brother, and his sister was the wife of Scott's lifelong friend, James Skene of Rubislaw. Principal James David Forbes, the physicist, was the youngest son of Sir William and Lady (Williamina) Forbes. The latter died in 1810, 34 MARRIAGE AND "THE MINSTRELSY" doubt that Scottwas madlyin love, and that scarcely any blow^ so staggered him. He felt it practically all his life, and many passages in the poems and novels were most surely inspired by the haunting remembrance of this his first love. In Rokehy, for instance, Matilda, the heroine of the poem, is a vivid description of the person of his beloved. The parting of Frank Osbaldistone and Di Vernon near the Fords of Frew, and the opening words of the twelfth chapter of Peveril, are equally applicable to the pair and the circumstances. Indeed, as Keble points out, it was his " early love's image haunting Scott all his life long that was the true well-spring of inspiration in all his minstrelsy and romance." But, spite of all, his heart, as he tells us, was "handsomely pieced again" though the "crack "remained. It was on Christmas Eve of 1797, within St Mary's Church at Carlisle, now merged in the Cathedral, that he led to the altar Miss Margaret Charlotte Char- pen tier. Miss Carpenter (as the name was FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT Anglicised) was of French extraction, the daughter of Jean Charpentier, a royalist of Lyons, Ecuyer du Roi, and of Charlotte Volere, who was connected with one of the old houses. Scott's description of his bride — " a brunette as dark as a blackberry, but her person and face very engaging " — com- pares well with the miniature at Abbots- ford, painted shortly before marriage. " A lovelier vision, as all who remember her in the bloom of her days have assured me, could hardly have been imagined," sums up Lockhart's account of her. Scott met her at Gilsland, a popular Cumberland Spa. The Gilslanders still point out the "Popping- Stone" where the fateful question was put, and the "Kissing-Thorn" beneath whose branches the compact was sealed, after a courtship not exceeding in months the number of years of his previous ven- ture. Long honeymoons were unknown in Scott's time, and on the day following his marriage he brought his bride by coach to 36 MARRIAGE AND " THE MINSTRELSY " Edinburgh, first to lodgings at 108 George Street, from which they afterwards re- moved to 10 South Castle Street, and next to 39 North Castle Street, the most famous of all the Edinburgh houses occupied by Sir Walter.i Here he lived till 1826, the dark year of his life, which witnessed the death of Lady Scott and the almost paralysing failure of his financial affairs. They had a summer house also, at Lasswade, seven miles south-east of the city, by "Eske's fair streams that run," where six of the happiest seasons of their married life were spent. The house, called Lasswade Cottage, is en- ' 39 Castle Street, occupied by a firm of lawyers, is practi- cally unchanged since Scott's time. The room in which he wrote (the "den "), and at the window of which Lockhart had the vision of "the hand," is absolutely unchanged, except, ofcourse, for its furnishings. So, too, is the dining-room. The bedrooms are turned into oflBces, and the stone stairs are not without their own memories. Some alterations on the neigh- bouring buildings have spoiled the view both back and front, butotherwise the house is exactly as it was. Some interesting letters of Scott with reference to the property are in posses- sion of the present owner. At 39 most of the Waverleys were written and much of Scott's best work done. It is thus, as has already been said, Scott's truest Edinburgh memorial. 37 FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT larged somewhat, but retains its old circu- lar-looking appearance and curious conical thatched roof, which, but for its association with Scott, might long ago have been sup- planted by one of slate. Lasswade's surroundings made a very happy appeal to the heart of Scott. It is probably the " Gandercleuch " referred to in the preface of the Tales of my Landlord. In an arched aisle of the parish church re- pose the remains of the poet Drummond of Hawthornden, "the Scottish Petrarch," to whom a memorial was erected in 1893. "Here Damon lies, whose songs did sometime grace The murmuring Esk — may roses shade the place ! " The Esk flows near. " Classic Hawthorn- den" itself is at hand, where in the winter of 1618-19 Drummond entertained Ben Jon- son, who came on foot all the way from Lon- don to see him. Roslin Castle (a ruin) and Chapel, an "unfinished thought in stone" (still a place of worship, the supposed En- gaddi of The Talisman), are in the neigh- 38 MARRIAGE AND "THE MINSTRELSY" bourhood, the latter containing the exqui- sitely sculptured Prentice Pillar (probably Prince's), around which has grown the well- known myth of the apprentice being a bet- ter man than his master. But the true interest of Lasswade as a bit of the Scott Land lies in the fact that here Scott commenced the craft of authorship, excepting, of course, his Biirger transla- tions, The Chase, and William and Helen, published in 1796 — a complete failure. Ear- ly in 1799 he published a translation of Goe- the's tragedy, Goetz of Berlichingen With the Iron Hand, and composed some original ballads, mostly in imitation of the ancient Scottish measure, such as the Eve of St John (a Sandyknowe legend — really Irish, however), with Glenfinlas, and The Gray Brother, in the latter of which we get a beautiful little picture of Lasswade and its surroundings : — " Sweet are the paths, O passing sweet ! By Eske's fair streams that run, O'er airy steep, through copsewood deep, Impervious to the sun. 39 FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT There the rapt poet's step may rove, And yield the muse the day ; There Beauty, led by timid Love, May shun the tell-tale ray ; From that fair dome, where suit is paid By blast of bugle free. To Auchendinny's hazel glade And haunted Woodhouselee. Who knows not Melville's beechy grove And Roslin's rocky glen, Dalkeith, which all the virtues love, And classic Hawthornden ? " The "fair dome" was Penicuik House, the home of Scott's bosom friend. Will Clerk. At Auchendinny lived Henry Mackenzie, "the Man of Feeling," the doyen of Scottish literature, to whom Scott dedicated Wav- erley. Woodhouselee, a seat of the Fraser- Tytlers, was the reputed haunt of a lady in white with a child in her arms — the ghost of Hamilton of Bothwellhaugh's wife and her new-born babe, both of whom perished in consequence of being driven out of doors on a winter night under instructions from the Regent Moray. Hamilton's revenge on 40 MARRIAGE AND "THE MINSTRELSY ' Moray forms the theme of Scott's fine bal- lad, Cadyow Castle. Near Lasswade are Melville Castle, the baronial pile of the statesman Henry Dundas, Viscount Mel- ville, to whom Scott owed so much, and Dalkeith House, the seat of his chieftain, the Duke of Buccleuch. But the Minstrelsy was the w^ork by which Scott first leapt into fame. No book, he says, afforded so much pleasure in its composition, nor can it be doubted that in making it, Scott was virtually making him- self as a writer and romancist. He was a balladist from his boyhood. Only for his being "ordered South" to Sandy kno we and the Border — one of the supremely fortu- nate accidents of history — we may not have had the Minstrelsy, or the more mag- nificent succession of Waverley. Practical- ly all his future (as has already been hinted) lay in the wake of that early environment. The peat -fires and the summer hills of Sandyknowe were the two factors which combined to give us Walter Scott as we 41 FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT best know him. Whatever may be said to the contrary, the Minstrelsy was Scott's day-dream as a boy. He may not have ex- pressed himself in so many words, but the fascination held him and haunted him all through the years of youth, and there is ample evidence of an ambition to link his name with the legendary lore of the coun- try as emphatically as Bishop Percy and other delvers in the same field. Soon after being called to the Bar, he began the work of collecting and collating the various bal- lad versions which crossed his path. In company with Robert Shortreed, most ge- nial of Sheriff-Substitutes (of Roxburgh- shire), he made an annual holiday, or "raid," as he loved to call it, into one of the lonesomest, and at that time most in- accessible, districts of the Border. Liddes- dale, the southernmost half of Roxburgh- shire, was practically an unknown land — "like some unkenned-of isle ayont New Holland," as in some respects it still is, for the more central parts of the Border at 42 MARRIAGE AND " THE MINSTRELSY " least. Saturated with old-world memories, the last haunt of the balladists, a peel crum- bling in every glen, it was Scott's happy hunting-ground for no fewer than seven seasons in succession. He probably never enjoyed himself as much in his life as dur- ing those expeditions. Lockhart certainly thinks so, and humorously details some of the travellers' experiences as they passed " from the shepherd's hut to the minister's manse, and again from the cheerful hospi- tality of the manse to the rough and jolly welcome of the homestead, gathering wher- ever they went songs and tunes, and occa- sionally more tangible relics of antiquity." Shortreed's words, years afterwards, are perhaps more expressive : " Eh me ! sic an endless fund o' humour and drollery as he then had wi' him. Never ten yards but we were either laughing, or roaring, or sing- ing. Wherever we stopped, how bravely he suited himsel' to everybody ! He aye did as the lave did; never made himsel' the great man, or took ony airs [put on airs] in FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT the company. I've seen him in a' moods on these jaunts, grave and gay, daft and seri- ous, sober and drunk — this, however, even in our wildest rambles, was but rare — but, drunk or sober, he was aye the gentleman." Nor must we forget the golden days among the Yarrow and Ettrick uplands — the true Ballad Country of the Borders which yield- ed so much excellent fruit. Three names dear to every Scott-lover, and to every Bor- derer, and no less dear for their own sakes, appear on the scene at this juncture — Will- iam Laidlaw, James Hogg, and John Ley- den. The first of these, the " dear Willie " of the Abbotsford days, Scott's friend, after- wards his amanuensis, is one of the most lovable characters in literary biography. Laidlaw was born at Blackhouse in the en- chanted Vale of Yarrow, and to Black- house came Scott on one of his ballad- hunting excursions. Laidlaw told him a- bout James Hogg, over at Ettrick — a poet, and an enthusiast on the subject — whom Scott at once resolved to see. The date of 44 YARROW From a ivater-colour drawing by TOM SCOTT, R.S.A. ' By Ynrmv's straun still let me sfray, Though none should guide my feeble way." SCOTT. MARRIAGE AND " THE MINSTRELSY " the first meeting between Scott and the Shepherd was the year 1802.^ From Hogg's mother, a perfect reposit- ory of the traditions of Ettrickside and the Border Country generally, Scott obtained more than one gem for his collection, not- ahly Auld Maitland. Visits to Ettrickhall — the Hogg homestead (now extinct) — be- came frequent enough, and old Mrs Hogg is said to have rallied Scott on the completion of his work: "There was never ane o' my sangs prentit till ye prentit them yersel! And ye hae spoilt them athegither. They were made for singin'an' no' for readin', but ye hae broken the charm now, an' they'll never be sung mair; an' the warst thing o' a', they're neither richt spelled nor richt settin' doun." The third of this happy triumvirate of ^ In his Domestic Manners and Private Life of Sir Walter Scott ( 1 834 ) — an admirable little compilation, notwithstanding Lockhart's strictures — Hogg gives the date as ' ' one fine day in the summer of 1801," But this is manifestly a mistake, for he speaks of having seen the first volumes of the Minstrelsy, and mentions that he had himself helped with matter for a third volume. 45 FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT Scott coadjutors wacs John Leyden, the Orientalist, and author of Scenes of Infancy. Leyden, a shepherd's son, was born at Den- holm, in Teviotdale, in 1775. When a student at Edinburgh he made an acquaintance with Scott, which ripened into the warmest friendship. Scott was never better helped than by Leyden, and the Minstrelsy contains several striking ballads from Leyden's own pen — Lord Soulis; The Cout ofKeeldar; and The Mermaid. At length, in January 1802, the work was issued and met with a hearty reception. The first edition consisted of 800 copies, of which 50 were on large paper. On the half- profit system, Scott shared to the extent of about £80, a sum which could never have repaid him for the actual disbursements incurred in collecting his materials. With- in less than a year all the copies were dis- posed of, and a new edition, with a third volume, printed at Edinburgh, appeared in April 1803. The Longmans secured the copy- right of the Minstrelsy for £500, and print- 46 MARRIAGE AND " THE MINSTRELSY " ed, up to 1820, half a dozen editions. Since then it has been chiefly incorporated in the collections of the " Poetical Works," to the extent of at least 15,000 more in Lockhart's time ; now it must be near five times that figure. Whilst preserving in imperishable ink the best of the hitherto unpublished bal- lads of the Border, this also must be said for the Minstrelsy, that it was the germ out of which grew the stately succession of Waverley itself. It was the seed-plant of every one of Scott's romances. Minus the Minstrelsy, we might have been minus Wav- erley and Guy Mannering and Old Mortality and Redgauntlet themselves. For a course of Scott, one cannot do better than begin with the Minstrelsy. Certainly Scott can- not be said to be read if the Minstrelsy be a shut book. There is so much in it that one would not like to lose — so much that throws a flood of light on the character and the lat- er work of its compiler. " No person who has not gone through its volumes," says 47 FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT Lockhart, "for the express purpose of com- paring their contents with his great origin- al works, can have formed a conception of the endless variety of incidents and images now expanded and emblazoned by his ma- ture art, of which the first hints may be found either in the text of those primitive ballads, or in the notes which the happy rambles of his youth hadgathered together for their illustration." When Waverley was a new book, and all the world was puzzling over the problem of its authorship, John Wilson is reported to have exclaimed, with characteristic impatience : " I wonder what all those people are perplexing themselves about ? Have they forgotten the jprose of the Minstrelsy ? " May we glance for a moment at the after- career of the three whose names have just been mentioned — Laidlaw, Hogg, and Ley- den ? Laidlaw farmed for a time Traquair Knowe, in Traquair parish, where he wrote that touching lyric, ranking next to the Flowers of the Forest for its pathos — Lucys 48 MARRIAGE AND "THE MINSTRELSY'' Flittin — the scene of which is laid at that paradise of the Borders — The Glen. But Laidlaw, like Hogg, was unsuccessful as a farmer. Later in life he became Scott's steward at Abbotsford. He wrote for the magazines, and did a fair amount of liter- ary work, and it is an open secret that to many of his suggestions Scott was indebted for improvements in the novels. Almost the whole of The Bride of La7n7ner7noor was dictated to Laidlaw during the crisis of 1817. With the black year, 1826, Laidlaw quitted Scott's service, but returned in 1830. When the tragedy ended, he migrated north to Ross-shire, and was factor on the estate of Balnagowan. His health failing, he went to reside with his brother, a sheep-farmer at Contin, near Dingwall, where he died in 1845. James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, had a somewhat chequered career, both as shep- herd and as flockmaster himself. After oc- cupying several situations in Edinburgh and elsewhere, he settled finally in the Yar- 49 4 FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT row valley, at Altrive (now Eldinhope), tak- ing a lease also of Mount Benger (now ex- tinct), on the north side of the river, opposite Altrive. But Hogg was not made for farm- ing, and both attempts turned out failures. His most successful ventures were his mar- riage to Margaret Phillips, and the writing of the Queens Wake, especially Kilmeny, and several songs that must live so long as the Scottish tongue is spoken, such as, When the Kye Comes Hame; Cam ye by Athol; Flora Macdonald's Lament; Come o'er the Stream, Charlie; Lock the Door, Lariston. Nor can we forget his Skylark, or his Brow- nie of Bodsbeck and Shepherds Calendar, two of the best Border classics. His Sui- cide's Grave also is a powerful fragment, whose authorship has sometimes been at- tributed to Lockhart, but on inadequate evidence. It was at the Gordon Arms in Yarrowdale that Hogg and Scott met for the last time in 1832. Hogg died at Altrive three years later, and was buried among his shepherd ancestors in the green heart 50 MARRIAGE AND "THE MINSTRELSY" of Ettrick, within a stone's-throw of his birth-spot. John Leyden became a preacher of the Church of Scotland, but failed to obtain a parish — unfortunately for the Church and for the cause of learning. He afterwards studied medicine and took his degree of M.D. at St Andrews. In 1803 he sailed for India, rising in turn to a Professorship of Oriental Languages, and to a Judgeship, besides being Assay-Master of the Calcutta Mint. In 1811 he accompanied Lord Minto, then Governor-General, as interpreter, in the expedition against Java, and to investi- gate the language and literature of the tribes inhabiting the island. When near the seaport city of Batavia, as a result of his over-eagerness to explore an unventilated library containing many valuable manu- scripts, his brilliant and laborious career was sadly and suddenly terminated (from fever) whilst he was yet in his thirty-sixth year. Three days earlier — 28th August — Scott had written him a long letter relative 51 FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT to the purchase of Abbotsford, which was returned unopened. A Memoir from Scott's pen was published in the Edinburgh An- nual Register for the same year, and it is said that he could never speak of his friend "without his lip quivering and his eye moistening." In chapter xxi. of St Ronans Well, Mr Cargill likens Leyden to " a lamp too early quenched " ; a comparison which recalls the lines from The Lord of the Isles : " His bright and brief career is o'er. And mute his tuneful strains. Quenched is his lamp of varied lore That loved the light of song to pour ; A distant and a deadly shore Has Leyden's cold remains." [Since the proofs of this book were corrected, Mr Bell, the veteran referred to at page 8, has passed away. ] CHAPTER III ASHESTIEL AND THE VERSE ROMANCES At the uncommonly early age of twenty- eight Scott was installed Sheriff of Selkirk- shire — "the Shirra." He was indebted to the Duke of Buccleuch for the post, and there is little doubt as to his fitness for it. A failure at the Bar, he was, notwithstand- ing, an exceedingly able lawyer, "a pro- found jurist" indeed, according to those who knew him best ; impartial, with a wonder- ful stock of that most invaluable asset, com- mon sense. That even a judgeship would have been safe in his hands is hardly to be doubted. He did make some effort towards being appointed one of the Barons of Ex- chequer, as certain of the Scottish judges, in imitation of an English fashion, were then called, but the attempt — fortunately or unfortunately — came to nothing. The 53 FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT fact shows, however, what he thought of his own fitness, and Scott never rated him- self too high. He wrote on Judicial Re- form ; the legal allusions of the Waverleys; and his other offices, Clerk of Session, and Secretary to the Commission on Scottish Jurisprudence, are all corroborative of the claim set forth on his behalf to be a com- petent lawyer. He was thus thoroughly at home in the new role of Sheriff, which he held and adorned for the next thirty-two years. How^ well he performed his duties is evident from the inscription on the Sel- kirk statue, which stands immediately in front of the old County Court-house in the High Street:— ERECTED IN AUGUST 1839 IN PROUD AND AFFECTIONATE REMEMBRANCE OF Sir WALTER SCOTT, Baronet, SHERIFF OF THIS COUNTY FROM 1800 TO 1832. Like the Outlaw Murray, he was Sheriff of Ettrick Forest, the designation he pre- ferred, linking himself to the balladists 54 ASHESTIEL AND VERSE ROMANCES and all the romance of the most romantic Sheriffdom in Scotland. He was not at home in another sense, however, as he might have found to his cost, had he persisted in disregarding the regulation which obliges a Sheriff to reside for at least four months in the year within his jurisdiction. Scott did not comply w^ith this requirement for about five years after his appointment, much to the annoyance (unnecessary) of Lord Napier, the Lord- Lieutenant, who sternly reminded him of his dereliction. That Scott did not take the rebuke at all well is clear. He considered it merely an insistence on an empty form. That, indeed, it was in some ways ; for not one of his shrieval duties had been neglect- ed, and the like condition was not enforced in the case of many of his brother Sheriffs. Technically, of course, Scott was in the wrong, a fact which he must have come to realise, for he immediately took steps to amend matters. The relinquishing of his "sweet little cottage "on the Eskwasakeen 55 FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT disappointment, but there was no help for it. It is interesting to hear of Harden and Newark in the running as possible resid- ences, though judgedboth unsuitable. Then Ashestiel cropped up and was fixed upon, the circumstances at the moment pointing to it as offering the best solution of the house difficulty. As the abode of his rela- tives — the Russells — the place was not un- known to Scott. Colonel William Russell, the husband of his maternal aunt, Jean Rutherford, had just died (1804), when Ash- estiel passed to Russell's son James (after- wards General Sir James), a soldier of distinction in the East India Company's service. With his cousin's trustees Scott bargained for a lease, and we find him in occupation soon afterwards. The Ashestiel tenancy —from 1804 to 1812 — must be reckoned far and away the hap- piest period of Scott's career. Here certain- ly we see him at his best from the stand- point of human enjoyment, for never was he so absolutely at rest again. How one 56 ASHESTIEL AND VERSE ROMANCES loves to remember himi at this point of his history, in those glorious halcyon days, ere yet the Abbotsf ord dream had roused him, before he had plunged into the vortex of commercial speculation, or had begun to suffer from the inconvenient attentions of the lion-hunters ! Happy in his wife, in his family, in his friendships, in his health ; pos- sessed of a competence, immune from the real worries of life ; with a learned leisure which later years never gave him, with long evenings free for the cultivation of the literary habit, his life here was a truly ideal one. Of the place itself, Lockhart says that a more beautiful situation as the home of a poet could not be conceived. And it is the poetic that constitutes Ashestiel's chief at- traction. It was during Scott's stay here that his fame as a poet was established ; hence to students of the poems the house possesses an interest which is not shared by any of his other residences. With the stately Tweed flowing close by, and the "classic 57 FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT Yarrow," ""fabulosiis aswasever Hydaspes," a few miles off across the "wild, unbound- ed hills " which are the overshadowing presence in every direction, Ash estiel, more than Sandyknowe, more than Abbotsf ord, was "meet nurse for a poetic child." Since Scott's day the picturesqueness of the spot, whose autumn shades are so winsomely painted in the introduction to canto i. of Marmion, has greatly increased, as has in- deed all the beauty of that majestic sweep of the Tweed valley between Elibank and Ettrickfoot. Ashestiel remains in posses- sion of the family from whom Scott had it, but there is little left to remind us of his oc- cupancy — a portrait, a punch-bowl, and the invalid chair used in the last days at Ab- botsf ord, being about all. The house has changed somewhat, though not so "sorrowfully "as Ruskin would have us suppose. An east wing has been added, and the entrance, which was turned Tweed- wards, now faces the Yarrow heights. The site was chosen, no doubt, for defensible- 58 ASHESTIEL AND VERSE ROMANCES ness, a piece of the original peel being ob- servable in the present odd, three-cornered edifice. Scott wrote in what was the family dining-room — the library now— a quaint old-fashioned apartment with one window, on the east side of the entrance porch. Through one of the original windows (con- verted into presses, by the fireplace) the greyhounds, Douglas and Percy, referred to in Marmion as "cumbering our parlour's narrow floor," leapt out and in at pleasure. The garden, described by Lockhart, with its " hoUy hedges and broad green terraced walks," is little altered; and the deep ravine to the east, through which a mountain riv- ulet " more heard than seen " " hurries its waters to the Tweed," is still true to the Marmion picture : — " Late, gazing down the steepy linn That hems our little garden in, Low in its dark and narrow glen, You scarce the rivulet might ken, So thick the tangled greenwood grew, So feeble trUl'd the streamlet through : 59 FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT Now murmuring hoarse, and frequent seen Througli bush and brier, no longer green, An angry brook, it sweeps the glade, Brawls over rock and wild cascade, And, foaming brown with double speed, Hurries its waters to the Tweed. " In Scott's time there was no bridge across the Tweed (the present structure dates from 1848), and access to the house was only to be gained by a rather perilous ford, of which many humorous and exciting anec- dotes are recorded. Scott had an amazing fondness for fords, and was not a little ad- venturous in dashing through, whatever might be the state of the flood. If it was at all possible to scramble across, he scorn- ed to go ten yards about. Like Morton in Old Mortality, "the management of a horse in water was as familiar to him as when upon a meadow," and most of his heroes appear to have been endowed with similar propensities. Even the White Lady of Avenel delights in the ford. In his descrip- tion of Marynion fording the Tweed at Coldstream we have a characteristic pic- 60 ASHESTIEI. AND VERSE ROMANCES ture of Scott himself plunging into the river at Ashostiel: — " Then on that dangerous ford, and deep, Where to the Tweed, Leet's eddies creep, He ventured desperately ; And not a moment will he bide Till squire, or groom, before him ride, Headmost of all, he stems the tide, And stems it gallantly." It is possible that an incident recalled by Skene may have given rise to these lines, when (after a notable flood in 1805) "Scott was the first to attempt passage of the Tweed on his favourite black horse Cap- tain, who had scarcely entered the river when he plunged beyond his depth, and had to swim to the other side with his burden. It requires a good horseman to swim a deep and rapid stream, but he trusted to the vigour of his steady trooper, and in spite of his lameness, kept his seat manfully." One or two pleasant little photographs of the Ashestiel life appear in the Familiar Letters, published by Mr David Douglas in 1894. In a letter to Leyden, dated July 5, 61 FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT 1806, Scott says : " I have taken a lease of the house and estate of Ashestiel. You remember this little mansion upon the Tweed where we dined with the Miss Rutherfords and the Miss Russells. I have sublet the whole of the sheep farm, which is valuable and extensive, and retained in my own hands a small arablefarmfor cows, horses, sheep, for the table, etc. Here we live all the summer like little kings, and only wish that you could take a scamper with me over the hills in the morning, and return to a clean tablecloth, a leg of forest mutton, and a blazing hearth in the after- noon." In August he writes to Lady Abercorn : "Our whole habitation could dance very easily in your great salon without displac- ing a single moveable, or endangering a mirror. We have no green pastures, nor stately trees; but to make amends, we have one of the most beautiful streams in the world, winding through steep mountains, which are now purple with the heath-blos- 62 ASHESTIEL AND VERSE ROMANCES som. We are eight miles from the nearest market town, and four from the nearest neighbour.^ The last circumstance I by no means regret, but the first is productive of very curious shifts and ludicrous distresses. . . . For example, my scrutoire having tra- velled by some slow conveyance, I was ob- liged — not to mention searching half an hour for this solitary sheet of paper — to sally forth and shoot a crow to procure a quill, which performs its duty extremely ill, as your Ladyship is witness, . . . For the main business of the day, we have the best mutton in the world, and find by ex- perience that the air of our hills makes an excellent sauce. Then we have pigs and poultry, and a whole apparatus of guns, fishing-rods, salmon-spears, and nets for the employment of male visitors, who do ^ Ashestiel is equidistant from Selkirk and Innerleithen, about 7J miles. Neighbours are near enough now. The Peel, Laidlawstiel, Holylee, and Fairnalee are all within a comparatively short distance. In Scott's time, Ashestiel lay in the parish of Yarrow ; it is now included in the quoad sacra parish of Caddonfoot. 63 FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT not find their sport less agreeable because part of their dinner depends upon it. Then grouse -shooting begins by -and -by, and I have some very good coveys on the moors, besides the privilege of going far and wide over those of my neighbour the Duke of Buccleuch, a favour not the less readily granted because, like many other persons in this vrorld, I make more noise than 1 do mischief. Then, if all this is insufficient, you shall have hare soup; for am I not the Sheriff of the County, and may I not break the laws when I please, and course out of season? Besides all this, you shall have one of the kindest welcomes which our hospi- table mountaineers can afford." All of which shows how the Shirra's heart lay. He was sportsman no less than student — as eager for out-of-doors amuse- ments as for the morning's desk-work. Few men, it must be said, made test of nature's possibilities more than Scott, " combining strenuous intellectual toil with physical ex- ertions which of themselves would have 64 ASHESTIEL AND VERSE ROMANCES sufficed to tax to the uttermost men of more energetic temper and robust frame." There was unhmited scope for his favourite sport of greyhound coursing, as well as for long revelling rides across the hills. He rode with a recklessness which alarmed his compan- ions. "The de'il's in ye, Shirra," one of them would say. " Ye'U never halt till they bring ye hame wi' your feet foremost." At night he had the excitements, not to mention the risks, of salmon-leistering. What rambles, too (" raids " on a smaller scale than in the Minstrelsy days), "through all the wide Border," with such a boon comrade as Skene, for instance, whose Reminiscences are among the finest things in the Bio- graphy ! We see Scott at Ashestiel, thrice happy both in his work and play, a favour- ed child of fortune, with not a cloud to dar- ken his sky ! Scott's friendships at Ashestiel are among its most enlivening features. It was here that Tom Purdie came into the arena for the first time, in the capacity of poacher, 65 5 FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT forsooth, — escaping the law, however, with such a mournful account of his circum- stances as to play upon the Sheriff's sym- pathy, and to end in his being taken into the Sheriff's employment. First he ^vas grieve on the little hill-farm (a position offered, by the way, to Hogg, but declined), and by and by we know how, by dint of that rare fidelity which characterised all his future, he won his way as Scott's trusted facto- tum, and by far the best-known of Scott's friends in humble life. He had his weak- ness, to be sure, which drew from Scott the threatened epitaph, "Here lies one who might have been trusted with untold gold, but not with unmeasured whisky." But his death was a staggering blow to Scott. " There is a heart cold that loved me well, and thought of my interest more than his own," he said. Of memorials raised by mas- ters over the remains of faithful servants, none is more touching, none more honest, none more remembered by the world. Peter Mathieson, Purdie's brother-in-law, came 66 ASHESTIEL AND VERSE ROMANCES into Scott's service as coachman about the same time — a no less loyal soul, who sur- vived Sir Walter several years. It was at this time, too, that Scott became acquainted with Mungo Park, the hero of the Niger, who was living at his native cottage of Foulshiels, on the Yarrow, writ- ing the story of his travels, and planning a second expedition into Africa. Many a long talk had those two great Borderers on the subject of African exploration. On the eve of his departure, Park paid Scott a fare- well visit, and slept at Ashestiel. Next morning his host accompanied him home- ward on horseback by the bridle-path a- mong the silent lonely hills betwixt Tweed and Yarrow. They parted on Williamhope Ridge, at the head of the Peel Glen. A small ditch divided the moor from the road, and in going over it Park's horse stumbled and nearly fell. "I am afraid, Mungo, that is a bad omen," said Scott ; to which Park replied, with a smile, "Freits [omens] follow those who look to them." With this he 67 FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT struck spurs into his horse, galloped off, without once looking back, and Scott saw him no more. It was now that Scott began the habit of doing his literary work in the morning, rising at five o'clock, lighting his own fire in the season, shaving and dressing with deliberation, sitting down at his desk at six and writing for three hours before break- fast, which he called " breaking the neck of the day's work." After breakfast he had generally two hours more, and by noon he was "his own man," as he phrased it. In good weather he was usually out and on horseback by one o'clock. It was only by a faithful adherence to method that, despite the multitudinous demands upon his time, Scottwas able to get through the enormous literary tasks which lay to his hand. Albeit the birthplace of the great verse- romances, one fears that Ashestiel is, in some way, a forgotten shrine, like Sandy- knowe. It also is slightly off the beaten track, though easily accessible from Gala- 68 ASHESTIEL AND VERSE ROMANCES shiels, or Selkirk, or Innerleithen. The traveller by rail may enjoy a momentary glimpse of the spot midway between Clo- venfords and Thornielee stations. The first poem finished at Ashestiel was The Lay of the Last Minstrel. Though published in 1805, it was not, strictly speaking, a product of the Ashestiel period. Based on the Bor- der legend of " Gilpin Horner," and begun at the suggestion of Scott's "beautiful chief tainess," the Countess of Dalkeith (re- calling Cowper's Sofa and Lady Austen), The Lay was originally meant to be a modern Minstrelsy ballad. But the piece had run into three or four cantos, and was, besides, well able to stand on its own in- dependent merits. Hence its separate pub- lication. A first draft of canto i., " almost in the state in which it was ultimately publish- ed," was written at Musselburgh in 1802, while Scott was confined in his lodgings for three days from the effects of a volunteer- ing accident. The main portions of the 69 FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT poem were composed partly at Lasswade, where Wordsworth, visiting Scott for the first time in September 1803, heard him read and recite the first four cantos, and was greatly charmed with the "novelty of the manners, the clear picturesque de- scriptions, and the easy glowing energy of much of the verse"; and partly at Ashestiel, whither Scott removed at the following Whitsunday. By Christmas 1804 it had passed through the press, and was given to the public early in the new year. Sir Tristrem excepted, The Lay was the first-fruits of the Minstrelsy, For years, as we have seen, the author had been living in a paradise of romance, and with heart and soul in the business, the poem came as a veritable inspiration. It was compara- tively easy for Scott to dash off its strong and stirring stanzas. When one recalls how the final volumes of Waverley were wrung from the evenings of three summer weeks, a canto per week of The Lay will not seem so surprising. Who but one of Scott's mar- 70 ASHESTIEL AND VERSE ROMANCES vellous capabilities, living the dual life of past and present, as familiar with the en- vironment of forgotten generations as with his own, could have accomplished feats of intellect so stupendous? It must be remembered also that Scott's poetical chances were then at their best. English Poetry had come to a kind of tran- sition stage. For a new voice and pen, with fresh measures and methods, there was the amplest room. So Scott drifted into his op- portunity. He took the tide at the flood, and it led him on to fortune. With themes so re- freshingly novel, and a style of the most romantic attractiveness, one little wonders that he so quickly attained popularity and place as the first poet of the day, until Byron's loftier genius blazed upon the hor- izon. It was the success of The Lay which decided Scott for the literary life— so "won- drous kind " were the critics, so exuberant was the public. And weightiest honour of all for the adventurous Minstrel, "amongst those who hastened to smile upon him were 71 FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT numbered the great names of William Pitt and Charles Fox." Thus at four-and-thirty, little more than a hundred years since, Walter Scott found the world at his feet. The first edition of The Lay was a magnifi- cent quarto of 750 copies, and of succeed- ing editions, 60,000 copies were sold in the author's lifetime. In the history of British Poetry, says Lockhart, nothing had equal- led the demand for The Lay of the Last Min- strel. The copyright was sold for £600, and of the whole profits Scott netted a trifle less than £770. The locale of The Lay is chiefly the coun- ties of Selkirk and Roxburgh. At Newark, in Yarrowdale, the Minstrel (whose model was probably Burne the Violer) is made to recite his tale, but the principal scenes are at Branksome, on the Teviot, and at Mel- rose Abbey. The finest parts of the poem dealwithDeloraine's night-ride, the finding of the Book in the dead Wizard's hand, the gathering of the Border clans, and, of course, the fights. Scott's best descriptive NEWARK From a water-colour drauiing by TOM SCOTT, R.S.A. ■ Then oft from Newark's riven tower, Sallied a Scottish monarch's power ; A thousand vassals muster d round, l\ it h horse, afid /lawk, and horn, and hound." SCOTT. ASHESTIEL AND VERSE ROMANCES pieces are most often his fights. Generally- speaking, there is no single plot, but a con- stant succession, if one may so style them. Curiously also, the very suggestion which lent origin to the romance falls into the background entirely, and becomes, as Scott himself felt, more of an "excrescence" than anything else. It was the wild Border life, with its passions, and intrigues, and jeal- ousies; with its loves and heroisms, that Scott found himself depicting, and that passes panorama-like through the whole piece. The poorest part is the goblin super- stition, that " ungraceful intruder," to use Jeffrey's apt designation. While, in one or two respects, The Lay is inferior to Mar- mion, it nevertheless contains grand and noble and inspiring passages, to which one may turn again and again with undimin- ished delight, with never a sense of stale- ness. Not since the days of Burns had the public listened to strains more simple and melodious; even yet it brooks but few rivals. Marmion, a Tale of Flodden Field, is the 73 FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT poem which most of all identifies itself with the Ashestiel period. Though, as a tale, it begins with "Norham's castled steep" and the English Border Country, its best things are not those splendidly Hom- eric passages which have given it a fore- most place among verse-romances. These are rather to be found in the Introductory Epistles. They have no historical connec- tion with the narrative itself, and were resented by the critics (notably by Southey) as so many interruptions to it. Still are they replete with the most exquisite word- paintings that Scott has given us, nearly all of them reminiscent of the scenery and friendships of Ashestiel and its surround- ings. They tell of such spots as the Shirra's Knowe and the Shirra's Tree, both exist- ent to-day, where particular portions were penned ; of excursions to " lone St Mary's silent lake " ; of the charmed Sandyknowe memories, and of his own Edinburgh : " Liberal, unconfiiied, and free, Flinging her white arms to the sea." 74 ASHESTIEL AND VERSE ROMANCES Each Preface is in itself a connnemoration of happy fellowships during the Ashestiel days. It is interesting to note that the last of these prologues is inscribed "Mertoun House," and is redolent of the old-fashioned Christmas festivities which Scott never failed to join in at the seat of Hugh Scott, the head of his own particular branch of the clan, now represented by Lord Polwarth : " And thus my Christmas still I hold Where my great-gran dsire ["Beardie"] came of old With amber beard and flaxen hair And reverend apostolic air." Marmion, for which Scott received a thousand guineas before Constable saw a line of it, was published in February 1808, as a splendid quarto, price one guinea and a half. The edition — 2000 copies — was dis- posed of in less than a month. Numerous editions followed, and up to the date of Lockhart's Life (1837) the sale was estim- ated at 50,000. It is rather curious to recall Jeffrey's objection to the lack of patriotic 75 FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT feeling on the Scottish side, as he alleged, and still more strange that the stoical edi- tor of the Ediiibu7^gh — one of the author's intimates, too — alone of all the critics should have handled the fjoem with such ill-conceived severity. It was immediately after the appearance of Marmion that Scott helped to launch the opposition Tory Quarterly ; and, having broken with Constable, set up his own publishing house under the name of John Ballantyne «& Co., a blunder for which there is no palliation. It was Ballantyne's name, therefore, which appeared on the title- page of his next work. The Lady of the Lake, published in May 1810, and perhaps the most popular of all his poems. For the copyright Scott received 2000 guineas. The first edition, in quarto, consisted of 2050 copies, and " disappeared instantly," being followed in the same year by four other editions in octavo, amounting in all to 17,250 copies. Down to 18oG, Lockhart esti- mates the total at 50,000. The poem, which 76 ASHESTIEL AND VERSE ROMANCES was well received by the critics, including Jeffrey, who made handsome amends for his attack on Mcwmion, registers the high- water mark in Scott's poetical career. It has been more frequently reprinted than any of the other poems, and Jeffrey's pro- phecy, that The Lady of the Lake would be oftener read than either of its author's earlier romances, has come true. It was The Lady which really created the ever- growing enthusiasm for Highland scenery, for the Loch Katrine district in particular. Just as Scott may be said to have " made " Melrose, so is the Trossachs locality no less his " making " also. Ashestiel saw only the projection of The Lo7^d of the Isles, but the hastily-written Vision of Don Roderick, a poem published on behalf of Britain's Portuguese allies in the wars with Napoleon, is a product of the place. Greatest of all the memories of Ashestiel is that of Waverley. That, no less than Marmion, was " thought out " when Scott was having his "grand gallops among 77 FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT the braes," or wandering far from home with no companion but his dog, " amid the green and melancholy wildernesses where Yarrow creeps from her fountains." But of this in its proper quarter. CHAPTER IV ABBOTSFORD Two things — the near home-coming of his kinsman, the owner of Ashestiel, and his ambition to be himself a "Tweedside laird " — were the chief causes for what must be regarded as the most memorable move in Scott's career, namely, the creation of the world-famous Abbotsford. There is no oc- casion to cavil at Scott's liking for a laird- ship. Itwasalegitimate ambition under the circumstances. As a man of good social po- sition, of literary reputation, and possessed of fair means (his income was now ap- proaching £2000 a year), he could well af- ford to entertain such a desire. To make Scott the target, as has been done, for an attack on the pride and vanity of human wishes, is noways warranted by the facts of the case. Granted that he did commit mis- 79 FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT takes in the realisation of his dream of " playing the grand old feudal lord again," there was no reason why he should not have succeeded to the utmost. That he did fail (approximately) was owing entirely to his indiscretions. On a more modest scale, he would have attained his ideal untrammel- led in its felicity. But a more modest scale did not suit Scott, and he had to suffer the consequences. Surely, however, no stigma attaches to him for having desired to be laird of Abbots- ford, and to found a new branch of the Scotts ! We blame him, not for being a lord of acres, but for being a lord of too many acres before they had become truly his own. For, as the story of his life makes mani- fest, he was from the first only nominally proprietor of Abbotsford. Still, the fact re- mains that, apart from Abbotsford and its *' making," Scott might never have been the man that he became. In this respect it is fortunate for the world that he had not the option of purchasing either Ashestiel or 80 ABBOTSFORD Broadmeadows, since, as may not be doubt- ed, Abbotsf ord proved to be the stimulus of an intellectual output which has had prob- ably no parallel in its own sphere. It is almost one hundred years since Scott acquired the land on which arose his lordly mansion. A characteristic description of the site is contained in his letter to Leyden, of date August 25, 1811 : " The best domestic intelligence is, that the Sheriff of Selkirk- shire, his lease of Ashestiel being out, has purchasedaboutahundred acres, extending along the banks of the Tweed just above the confluence of the Gala, and about three miles from Melrose. There, saith fame, he designs to bigg himself a hower—sibi et amicis — and happy will he be when India shall return you to a social meal at his cot- tage. The place looks at present very like •poor Scotland's gear.' It consists of a bank and haugh as poor and bare as Sir John Fal- staff's regiment ; though I fear, ere you come to see, the verdant screen I am about to spread over its nakedness will have in 81 6 FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT some degree removed this reproach. But it has a wild, solitary air, and commands a splendid reach of the Tweed ; and, to crown all, in the words of Touchstone, 'it is a poor thing, but mine own.' " That he had gauged the potentialities of the place goes without saying. For only a few years sufficed to show how clearly his prophet's eye had foreseen its wealth of promise and beauty. The spot comes upon the scene for the first time in history about the year 1797, as the property of Dr Robert Douglas, minister of Galashiels, then a mere hamlet, emerging on its career as a centre of the woollen trade. Dr Douglas,^ who has some claim to re- membrance as a pioneer in affairs both agricultural and industrial (he was known as " the Father of Galashiels "), had, how- ^ It was to Dr Douglas that Mrs Cockburn (Alison Ruther- ford, of Fairnalee, authoress of The Flowers of the Forest) wrote in 1777, telling of Scott, then in his seventh year, as "the most extraordinary genius of a boy I ever saw. " The asso- ciation of the two men, thirty-four years afterwards, is of singular interest. 82 ABBOTSFORD ever, done little or nothing for his estate by the Tweed. He never lived there, and con- temporary accounts describe the place as exhibiting anything but an attractive ap- pearance. " A low-built, one-storey house, standing in what was literally a hole" says one ; while another remarks that it " had little to recommend it as a site for a stately mansion." Lockhart, indeed, alleges that it actually went by the nickname of Clarty {i.e. filthy) Hole. But this is a mistake, as is seen from the title-deeds, the original designa- tion being really Cartley or Cartlaw Hole. "Clarty" was merely a vulgar play on the name, though apparently apt enough. Nev- ertheless, as has been said, the compensa- tions were sufficient to weigh against i ts lack of charm. These were, in Scott's eyes, the "ever-dear Tweed," his favourite river, flow- ing here " broad and bright, over a bed of milk-white pebbles" ; the proximity of " Eil- don's triple height"; and the splendidly storied neighbourhood of Melrose and Sel- kirk. 83 FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT On ground now enclosed within the Ab- botsford estate, the last clan battle of the Borders had been fought (1526) ; and from a ford at the junction of the Tweed and the Gala, used by the abbots of long ago, the henceforth classical designation of Scott's new lairdship was derived. The flitting from Ashestiel took place at Whitsunday 1812 — a comical affair, accord- ing to Scott's account of it. "The neigh- bours," he wrote to Lady Alvanley, " have been much delighted with the procession of furniture, in which old swords, bows, tar- gets, and lances made a very conspicuous show. A family of turkeys was accom- modated within the helmet of some p^^eux chevalier of ancient Border fame ; and the very cows, for ought I know, were bearing banners and muskets. I assure your lady- ship that this caravan, attended by a dozen of ragged, rosy peasant children, carrying fishing-rods and spears, and leading pon- ies, greyhounds, and spaniels, would, as it crossed the Tweed, have furnished no bad 84 ABBOT SFORD subject for the pencil, and really reminded me of one of the gypsy groups of Callot up- on their march." For the next twelve years Abbotsford was in the making. From a mere cottage, which it was at first, it passed to the villa stage, finishing up with what Scott termed a "manor-house," albeit a "castle" more or less. That was in 1824, after which date the building remained without alteration till the Hope Scott period in 1853. Mean- while the estate itself had stretched out considerably. The hundred acres had grown to over a thousand, for all of which fabu- lous prices ^vere paid to the greedy "cock- lairds" of the locality. From first to last the total outlay in the construction of Ab- botsford, including purchases of land and house furnishings, could not have been short of £75,000. Opinions differ as to the character of the building. Let us remember that it was reared on no set plan, but with a desire to reproduce some of the features of the an- 85 FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT cient baronial style which Scott so much admired. It is curious to contrast the view taken of the place during Scott's lifetime with that which has been expressed since his day. At first it was all praise and flat- tery. Then, we read of " a perfect picture of the wonderful owner's mind " ; of " a poem in stone"; of "a mosaic of Scottish history"; of a resemblance to "places one dreams about " ; of " a romance in stone and lime"; and so on. Later, we are confronted with statements about " the ugly Abbotsf ord " ; about "the most incongruous pile that gen- tlemanly modernism ever designed"; about "a sad piece of patch-work"; and many other architectural enormities. Is Abbotsf ord ugly? and is it a super- latively gloomy spot? Surely not ! Stripped of its associations, there is nothing special- ly depressing about it. To recall the tra- gedy of its owner's last years, and the fate of his family, introduces an element of pathos, to be sure, but it does not affect the complexion of the place, which most 86 ABBOTSFORD, NORTH FRONT, FACING THE TWEED From a wafer-LO/our drawing by TOM SCOTT, R.S.A. ' ' I have bought a property in the neighbourhood, extending along the banks of the river Tweed for about half-a-mile. It is very bleak at present, having little to recom?nend it but the vicinity of the river ; but as the ground is well adapted by nature to grow wood, arid is considerably various inform and appearance, I have no doubt that by judicious plantations it may be rendered a very pleasant spot. This is the greatest incident which has lately taken place in our domestic concerns, and I assure you we are not a little proud of bei/ig greeted as laird and lady of Abbotsford." SCOTT, iSii. " About July, Abbotsford will, I think, be finished, when I shall, like the old Duke of Queensberry who built Drumlanrig, fold up the accounts in a sealed parcel, with a label bidding ' the del I pick out the een of any of my successors that shall open it." SCOTT, 1824. ABBOT SFORD people consider a singularly delightful domicile indeed. "Irregular," "fantastic," " bemldering " it undoubtedly is, but it is not distasteful ; nor is it, as Dean Stanley declared, "a place to be seen once, and never again." As a matter of fact, one cannot pass judgment after a mere cursory visit. The more Abbotsford is known, the more must its real beauty and genius be sym- pathetically understood and venerated. Unfortunately for the present-day visi- tor, the exterior of the edifice is little in evidence. A glimpse of the garden front is about all that is to be had; and the north front, facing the Tw^eed, is not seen at all. As it is the latter which figures most prom- inently in the photographs, readers may be reminded that this is really the back of the building, the entrance being turned south- wards. It is rather a pity that arrange- ments cannot be made for the fuller in- spection of an abode so cosmopolitan in its interest. To enter by the castellated gateway into the beflowered courtyard ; to 87 FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT stand by the fountain formed from part of Edinburgh's Cross, "Whence royal edict rang, And voice of Scotland's law was sent In glorious trumpet-clang " ; to see Maida's effigy; to examine the Tol- booth door, or the porch modelled from Lin- lithgow Palace, and the numberless relics of antiquity that abound in every corner, and inmost unlikely places, are possibilities that await the visitor of the future. It was Mr Hope Scott who contrived the present mode of public entrance by means of a lane leading from the Selkirk road, passing beneath the fine freestone screen that divides the court- yard from the gardens, into one of the base- ment rooms, whence access is given to the apartments above, which are open to sight- seers. The rest of the house is in occupation. The usual order of going round begins with the Study, which remains very much as Scott left it. The room is of fair size, and is lighted by a large window looking out to the courtyard. A private staircase con- 88 ABBOTSFORD nects it with the bedroom portion of the house. In the Study are the desk at which most of the Waverleys were written ; ^ Scott's chair; Lockhart's chair; and the Wallace chair, presented by Train. Scott's card-plate and a print of Stothard's Canter- bury Pilgrims are over the mantel-piece. There is the portrait of Claverhouse which probably suggested Old Mortality, and por- traits of Rob Roy and Queen Elizabeth. In the adjoining turret-room, which Scott styled his Speak-a-Bit, a solitary object is the death-mask of Sir Walter — the face of a brother man stretched out too long upon the rack of this rough world. The majesty of the forehead and the dour earnestness of the features tell of Walter Scott the genius ; but it is in the corners of the mouth that all the pathos lies. In them there is the droop of an infinite weariness, and it makes the heart ache. ^ Only such articles as are more intimately connected with Scott are mentioned in these notes on the Study and other apartments. See Mrs Maxwell Scott's Catalogue and the present writer's Abhotsford for a detailed description. 89 FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT The Library is the largest and finest a- partment in the house. The ceiling, copied from Melrose and Rosslyn, is, alas, chiefly of stucco ! The book-presses contain about 10,000 volumes (including the Study, etc., there are twice that number). Nearly all the furniture in this room was presented to Scott, and is of great value. Only one por- trait has place here — a full-length of the second Sir Walter (by Sir William Allan). A colonel of the 15th Hussars, he served in India from 1839 to 1847, and died at sea near the Cape on his way home to Scotland. With him perished the hope of the Scotts of Abbotsford. The Chantrey Bust (1820), of which Lockhart said that it "alone pre- serves for posterity the cast of expression most fondly remembered by all who min- gled in Scott's domestic circle," occupies a conspicuous niche at one end of the room. Relics of Scott are contained in the glass table by the fine bow window — Beardie's quaigh ; the knife used by Scott as a boy ; a copy of the miniature referred to at page 90 ABBOTSFORD 27 ; miniatures of Scott at the time of his marriage, and of Miss Carpenter and her father. In the Drawing-Room — still bearing (wonderfully fresh) the Chinese paper pre- sented in 1822 by Captain Hugh Scott — the paintings include that of Sir Walter by Rae- burn ; Lady Scott by Saxon ; Scott's mother ; his daughters Anne and Sophia; and the Hon. Mrs Maxwell Scott. Amyas Cawood's curious, if repulsive, picture of the Head of Queen Mary after decapitation hangs in this apartment. Stepping westward, we next enter the Armoury, which runs right across the house, making a sort of ante-room between the dining and the drawing rooms. Here are displayed what is perhaps the finest private collection of arms in the world, gathered out of all ages and countries. Relics of Rob Roy are outstanding — his gun, sword, dirk, and sporran. The place of honour, however, must be given to the sword of the Great Marquis of Montrose, a "gabion" for which 91 FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT Scott was indebted to John Ballantyne. Claverhouse's pistols; Sir Walter s own gun and accoutrements worn by him when a yeoman in the Edinburgh Light Dragoons ; the second Sir Walter's sword and spurs ; the kej^s of Loch Leven Castle; Queen Mary's crucifix; the rifle of Andreas Hoffer, the Tyrolese patriot — these are the most noteworthy of the other objects. The Ar- moury paintings illustrate the domestic side of Scott's life. Here hang portraits of Tom Purdie (by Landseer) ; of John Swans- ton, Purdie's successor; of Peter Mathieson (coachman) with " Donald " the pony ; of "Hinseof Hinsfeldt," Scott's cat; and his dog " Ginger." Kirkpatrick Sharpe's sketches should be noted, as well as Greenshields's statuette of Scott — sic sedebat. The En- trance Hall comes last, with its pretty Bel- lenden windows, " shedding a sort of rich, red twilight" around the spacious apart- ment and its trophies. "To cover the walls of a stone house in Selkirkshire," wrote Carlyle (forgetting for the moment that Ab- 92 ABBOTSFORD botsf ord is in Roxburghshire), " with nick- nacks, ancient armour, and genealogical shields, what can we name it but a being bit with a delirium of a kind?" But it was Scott's hobby, and how has humanity pro- fited by it! The "genealogical shields" al- luded to, adorn the ceiling of the Entrance Hall, running along both sides, with the inscription in black letter : ^\)i^e be tl)c (Joat ^irmouriiS of pe dlannts; anb men of name qttl)a^ccptt tl)c ^cottbl) JEartljesi in ge Dans ot anlb. Stljeg mere tDortl)ic in tl)air tgme anb in tl)air iiefcnjS ^oii tl)aim befcnbii). The arms of Scott's own ancestors occupy a range of shields down the centre of the roof, thirteen of which are emblazoned with the names and arms of the families with whom he counted kin. The armour suits are fine specimens. The largest is believed to have belonged to Sir John Cheney, the biggest man who fought at Bosworth. Here also are Archbishop Sharp's grate; Ralph Erskine's pulpit, turned into a wine- cupboard; the keys of the Edinburgh 93 FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT Tolbooth ; the Hermitage touting-horn, a relic of the Minstrelsy " raids " ; Marie Antoinette's clock; "the mistletoe chest where Ginevra lay" (more than one Italian city shows the true original !) ; and, most touching of all, the last suit worn by the Wizard of Abbotsford. "When I was at Ab- botsf ord," wrote Dickens in 1851, " I saw in a glass case the last clothes Scott wore. Among them an old white hat, which seemed to be tumbled and bent and broken by the uneasy, purposeless wandering hither and thither of his heavy head. It so embodied Lockhart's pathetic description of him when he tried to write and laid down his pen and cried, that it associated itself in my mind with broken power and mental weakness from that hour." The Dining-room, looking out on the Tweed, is not open to the public. Portraits of Scott's ancestors adorn the walls — por- traits which, it is said, he was never tired of examining. Within the window alcove, the last act of the tragedy was played 94 ABBOTSFORD out exactly seventy-five years ago as these lines are being written. Onthe Abbotsford estate are Chief swood, the "bower" to which Lockhart brought his bride in 1821. Part of The Pirate was penned here ; and on the lawn inf ront, little Johnnie Lockhart (" Hugh Littlejohn "), Scott's grandchild, always delicate, heard the first of those Tales of a Gi^andfather, which still remain the best popular History of Scotland. Much of Lockhart's own good work was done at Chief swood — Valerius; Adam Blair; and not a few of the Spanish Ballads. The "runnel" behind, originally Dick's Cleugh, Scott christened the "Rhy- mer's Glen." It was a misnomer, but Scott liked to cherish the fancy that his own do- main contained the scene of True Thomas's liaison with the Fairy Queen. Cauldshiels Loch bounds the estate on the north. Here Scott wrote (in 1817) the most personally pathetic of his verses, beginning, " The sun upon the Weirdlaw Hill In Ettrick's vale is sinking sweet ; 95 FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT The westland wind is hush and still — The lake lies sleeping at my feet." Huntlyburn (originally Toftfield), the re- sidence of Sir Adam Ferguson, and Kaeside, Laidlaw's house on the heights, are both embraced in the Abbotsford area. Upon Faldonside, adjoining Abbotsford on the west, Scott cast longing eyes, and actually offered £30,000 for it, but Nicol Milne was obdurate. For Scott's good, surely! Darnick Tower, too, fascinated him, and John Heit- on was equally unbending.^ Of Scott's manifolded life at Abbotsford there is no need to write at length. Lockhart has done that once for all, and a perusal of Basil Hall's "Journal," embodied in the Biography, together with Washington Irving's essay, make plain to us the real man in Walter Scott. Albeit the Enchanter ' Faldonside belonged in 1566 to Andrew Ker, who was embroiled in the Rizzio affair. He married John li^nox's widow. Darnick has been a Heiton holding from the 16th century. The Tower is in admirable preservation, and con- tains a fine collection of relics and curios. It is open to the public. One of its owners, also a John Heiton, was author of The Castes of Edinburgh. 96 ABBOTS FORD for the touch of whose wand the world was waiting eagerly, it is the simplicity of the Abbotsford life which provokes admira- tion. Scott was not, in his ordinary life at any rate, the aristocrat he is said by some to have mostly shown himself. Sprung of " gentle birth," as well as having raised himself by his own abilities to a great position, and proud of it, no doubt, he was still one of the humblest of Nature's gen- tlemen ; as much at home amongst the poor and the undistinguished as in the company of peers of the realm, or royal George him- self. Abbotsford had no more joyful hours for Scott than those spent in the fellow- ship of common men like Laidlaw, and Tom Purdie, and Joseph Shillinglaw. Is not the finest tribute to Scott's worth as master and man seen in the statement made by one of his servants, " He speaks to us as if we were blood relations " ? Ab- botsford, it is said, was like a little happy world of its own — a most emphatic excep- tion to the cynic's rule. In the disillusion- 97 7 FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT ising domain of domestic life, the hero who never altered was Scott. The "strenuous life," a phrase which covers so much, was practised to the full by Scott at Abbotsf ord. How he managed to get through such an amount of work, and, at the same time, to appear so much at leisure, was a source of surprise to his friends. "I know," said Cadell, his pub- lisher, once to him, " that you contrive to get a few hours in your own room, and that may do for the mere pen-work, but when is it that you think ? " " Oh," said Scott, " I lie simmering over things for an hour or so before I get up, and there's the time I am dressing, to overhaul my half -sleeping, half - waking projet de chapitre, and when I get the paper before me it commonly runs off pretty easily. Besides, I often take a doze in the plantations, and while Tom marks out a dyke or a drain as I have directed, one's fancy may be running its ain riggs in some other world." His maxim was never to be doing noth- ABBOTSFORD ing, and in making the most of liis time he served both himself and others. One may mention, also, the more than hospit- able manner in which he was wont to entertain his constant army of guests, and to treat with amazing urbanity the hosts of the uninvited. In his more sacred relationships, Abbots- ford had very tender memories for Scott. Gossip's rancorous tongue has not been silent, assuredly. But whatever it may have said, Lockhart's chapters afford ster- ling proof of the comfort and the affection and the pleasure which characterised the whole family life. Lady Scott made him an excellent wife, notwithstanding her Frenchified ways and her utter lack of sym- pathy with the literary life. There are no passages in the Journal more truly touch- ing than those written at the time of his deep agony. In his children, Scott was un- fortunate. None of the four were ever strong physically, and none of them were long-livers. They were the joy of his life, 99 FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT both at Abbotsford and Edinburgh, but how soon after his own candle was extin- guished did their brief hghts burn out! Anne (the original of Alice Lee in Wood- stock), his younger daughter, died less than a year after her father ; Mrs Lockhart, in little more than four years and a half; Charles, the younger son, within nine, and Walter within fifteen years. Anne and Sophia lie in Kensal Green Cemetery, Lon- don ; Charles at Teheran ; ^ and Walter at Dryburgh. As to the fortunes of Abbotsford from 1847, Walter Scott Lockhart, a Lieutenant in the 16th Lancers, Lockhart's younger son, succeeded his uncle, but died un- married in 1853. His sister Charlotte thereupon came into possession. She was the wife of James Robert Hope, Q.C., who, on her succeeding to Abbotsford, assumed the family name of Scott. It is to Mr Hope Scott that Abbotsford owes its re- ^ He was private secretary to Sir John McNeill, Commis- sioner to the Persian Court. His remains lie in the Armenian Church. The grave is in excellent condition. 100 ABBOTSFORD ' construction. He did wonders for the place, which had been sadly neglected since 1832. He added a new west wing, and effected many improvements, both inter- nally and externally. Upon his death in 1873, x\bbotsf ord went to his only daughter by Charlotte Lockhart, his first wife ; and in 1874 that daughter, Mary Monica Hope Scott, then sole surviving descendant of Sir Walter Scott, was wedded to the Hon. Joseph Constable-Maxwell, third son of the eleventh Baron Herries of Terregles. Of this marriage there are four sons and three daughters. On the eldest, Walter, an officer in the Army, who saw service in South Africa, many hopes are centred. As heir to Abbotsf ord, and the bearer of a name so illustrious, may it also be said of him that " the might of the whole world's good wishes with him goes " I CHAPTER V FOOTPRINTS OF WAVERLEY In the popular imagination, Abbotsford is regarded as the birthplace of all the Wav- erleys. Students of Scott know, however, that comparatively few of the Novels were written there. Castle Street saw the gene- sis of at least three-fourths, and it was there that Waverley itself was licked into shape. Curiously, the associations of Waverley, the first of the brilliant galaxy, are with Scott's three houses, Ashestiel, Abbotsford, and 39 Castle Street. Ashestiel may be said to be the cradling-ground of the romance. "Contentedly," says Ruskin (writing of Ashestiel), " in such space and splendour of domicile, Waverley was begun." The date seems to have been 1805 (the year of The Lay), as Lockhart assumed from the water-mark of the manuscript. At that time Scott had written seven chapters. The work was an- 102 FOOTPRINTS OF WAVERLEY nounced as a coming publication, and so would have appeared eight years earlier than it did but for the advice of WiU Ers- kine, who was only " faintly interested " in Scott's new venture. The MS. was accordingly set aside, to lie unheeded for five years. James Ballan- tyne saw it in 1810, but gave no encourage- ment. Again it was put past, and lost sight of for other three years. By a mere acci- dent, the missing sheets were discovered in a kind of odds-and-ends cabinet at Abbots- ford, into which Scott happened to look for fishing flies. This time his own better judgment made him go on vtdth the story. So rapidly did he execute his purpose that the remainder of it was accomplished within the almost incredible space of three weeks, the evenings principally, during the months of May and June 1813. Lock- hart's incident of "the hand" is so well known that it may only be referred to as showing that the bulk of the novel was a product of the " den " at Castle Street. On 103 FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT July 7th, 1814, Waverley was given to the world anonymously in three volumes, at the price of a guinea and a half, the sum which obtained so long for the older-fashioned form of fiction. The 1000 copies which made up the first edition disappeared within a month, a second issue of 2000 being on sale during August. Before the end of the year, 3000 more had been called for, and up to the date of the Life, Lockhart comj)utes the cir- culation at 40,000. ^ It is stated that Waver- ley was offered to a London publisher, who refused it. Ballantyne then opened up ne- gotiations with Constable, who haggled about the price, and offered £700. Event- ually the half-profits plan was agreed to, though Constable afterwards regretted that he did not accept Ballantyne's offer of £1000 for the complete copyright. 1 Compared witli the circulation of some present-day novels, this figure is trifling. But the conditions between then and now have vastly altered. The taste for fiction has been whetted to an enormous degree, while the j)rice of books has steadily decreased. See Chapter VIII. for a consideration of the Scott literature to-day. 104 FOOTPRINTS OF WAVERLEY In a sense, one may be sorry that Scott listened to Erskine's condemnation. But for that, what treasures more might we not have had? Don Roderick; Rokeby; The Bridal of Triermain, could well have been sacrificed for the ten or twelve novels that, judging by the future output at any rate, were amply possible within the period. It cannot be doubted that Waverley would have been as great a success in 1805 as it was in 1814. But the years between were far from being idly spent, and Scott was doubtless the better equipped for this the real work of his life when its full time had come. The sub- title, 'Tis Sixty Years Since, car- ries the romance back to the 'Forty-five, the most memorable episode in Scottish his- tory. With every phase of the Rising, its localities and actors, Scott was on famil- iar ground. The theme appealed to his strongly romantic temperament, and the chapters, after the story has been really en- tered upon, never fail to fascinate with 105 FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT their rare flow of energy, and the fine his- toric sense to which they are attuned. For- tunate it was for Scotland that Jacobitism ended as it did ! Who is there, however, who has not a more or less sneaking admir- ation for the heroes and heroines of the ill- starred attempt ? None may question the sincerity of those who made such risks for one who, after all, showed himself not al- together worthy of the love lavished upon him or the blood spilled on his behalf. The Waverley arena confines itself chief- ly to the Perth Highlands, though the exigencies of the story lead to other parts of Scotland, and to the English Border, where the closing tragic scenes are enact- ed. Tradition ascribes the impress of a man's fingers on a window-sill at Carlisle Castle as the work of MacDonald of Tyne- drish, a prototype of the gallant Fergus Mac-Ivor. The "solemn and chivalrous" Baron of Bradwardine is like enough to have been the fourth Lord Forbes of Pits- ligo, who was " out " in the '15 and the '45. 106 FOOTPRINTS OF WAVERLEY Davie Gellatley,"no further a fool than was necessary to avoid hard labour," was drawn, as Robert Chambers thinks, from daft Jock Gray of Gilmanscleuch, in Ettrick, a wan- dering rustic known to all the Border. TuUy-Veolan, the mansion of the story, has a plethora of originals. Traquair is as good as any, but GrantuUy and Craighall,^ in Perthshire ; Bruntsfield, Craigcrook, Ravel- ston, all Edinburgh houses, and the Gallo- way Kenmure, are claimants. Guy Mmmering, the second of the Wav- erleys, followed in 1815. It was the work of a winter six weeks, at Abbotsford mostly, and was the equal of its prede- cessor in popularity. The first edition of 1 " From the position of this striking place [Craighall], as Mr Clerk at once perceived, and as the author afterwards confessed to him, that of Tally- Veolan was very faithfully copied ; though in the description of the house itself, and its garden, many features were adopted from Bruntsfield and Ravelston." — Lockhart. It is curious to find Lockhart passing over Traquair, which exhibits so remarkable a resemblance to the mansion depicted in the story. Without doubt, Scott had this ancient history-haunted pile in his mind's eye at the time he began Waverley, As a matter of fact, he was then living within a few miles of it. 107 FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT 2000 was sold out on the day of publication. Within three months second and third editions were issued, and the sales previous to 1829 made a total of 10,000. For the novel, Scott received the sum of £2000. Next to Old Mortality, Guy Mannering is unquestionably the finest romance from Scott's pen. Ruskin places it before In Memoriam. Wilkie Collins read it fifty times over. GilfiUan declares that it runs as one sentence. Much of the plot drew its inspiration from Joseph Train, that good Galloway ganger to whom the world owes such a debt. But for Train, who freely gave up his own literary ambitions^ to become a kind of lion's provider to Scott, Guy Man- nering might not have been heard of. Nor Old Mortality either, to be sure ! For, as ^ Train (1779-1852), an excise-officer, was author of a vol- ume of poems, Strains of the Mountain Muse, the publication of which, in 1814, brought him into communication with Soott. His other works were a History of the Isle of Man, and The Buchanites from First to Last. He died at Castle- Douglas, and on his tombstone, in Kelton Kirkyard, he is commemorated as "the friend and correspondent of Sir Walter Scott." See Memoir by John Patterson. 108 FOOTPRINTS OF WAVERLEY we shall see, that, too, was Train's sugges- tion. A fortunate relationship for Scott, and for literary history ! In the sphere of letters there is no more pleasing record of self-abnegation. Guy Mannering belongs to Galloway. There is only the scantiest evidence to show that Scott ever was in the Stewartry. But having Train for his guide was sufficient for the topography of the tale. Hence the true Guy Mannering Country, despite the claims of more than one other district, is not unlikely to be that lying between Gate- house -of- Fleet and Creetown, the coast line of which was described by Queen Victoria as " the most beautiful shore-road in Britain." The striking resemblances between the scenery painted in the novel and that in the neighbourhood of Ravenshall, can scarcely be regarded as a coincidence. Architecturally considered, Ellangowan is, of course, Caerlaverock Castle, on the Nith side of the Solway. But beyond that cir- cumstance, there is no reason to doubt that 109 FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT Scott — whether he were ever in Kirkcud- brightshire or not — had in his mind's eye the locaUties that Train had mapped out for him, localities with which no one was more familiar. The gypsy part of Guy Mannering Scott gathered from his father's memory of the redoubtable Jean Gordon of Yetholm, and his own recollection of her no less Amazon- ian grand-daughter, "a woman of more than female height, dressed in a long red cloak, who commenced acquaintance by giving me an apple, but whom, neverthe- less, I looked upon with much awe." Meg Merrilies was either the one or the other, or a compound of both. Dominie Sampson was drawn, as Lockhart supposes, from George Thomson, son of the minister of Melrose: a possible original, although it is not at all improbable that Scott was think- ing of James Sanson, tutor to the Elliston Scotts, and latterly occupant of i)reaching stations, first at Caerlanrig (now Teviot- head), then at Leadhills, where he died in 110 FOOTPRINTS OF WAVERLEY 1794. Sanson assuredly answers to the Dominie's every characteristic, and in a quaint sketch of him (in the possession of the present writer), procured in the Earls- ton district, of which Sanson was a native, he is expressly designated as Scott's origi- nal. Dandie Dinmont, the best rustic pic- ture that has ever been exhibited to the reading public, is doubtless a composite character, made up of Willie Laidlaw plus Elliot of Millburnholm (Charlieshope) and Archie Park of Lewinshope (Thorlieshope), whose wife was an "Ailie." Scott did not meet Davidson of Hindlee, owner of all the Mustards and Peppers, till some years after the novel was written. Dirk Hatteraick, "half Manx, half Dutchman, half devil," was a Dutch skipper yclept Yawkins. Tod Gabbie was studied from Tod Willie, the huntsman of the hills above Loch Skene. Colonel Mannering was, as Hogg put it, "just Walter Scott painted by himself." In Julia Mannering we have a portrait from the life of Miss Carpenter. Gilsland, where 111 FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT Scott and the latter became acquainted, fig- ures in the incident of Mumps Ha', whose site is still pointed out. Tib Mumps [Mar- garet Carrick] herself lies in the churchyard of Denton among the Cumberland hills. The publication of the third of the Wav- erley series in May 1816 was followed by the fourth— the first of The Tales of My Landlord — in December, making no fewer than three novels in one year. Those were The Antiquary (Scotf 8 own favourite), with Old Mortality, the most fanatically criti- cised, and, curiously. The Black Divarf, one of the least interesting of the number. Cop- ies of The Antiquary went off at the rate of a thousand a day for the first week, and of the Tales, three editions, making a total of 6000, were at press within six weeks. As Waverley dealt with the days of his fathers, and Guy Mannering with those of his own youth, so The Antiquai'y pictured a period only some ten or fifteen years back, an era that was still remembered by reason of its political unrest and alarms of French in- 112 FOOTPRINTS OF WAVERLEY vasion. It is the charm of this latter tale that, whilst lacking the romance and ex- citement of its predecessors, it can at least claim to be painted direct from nature, and to be redolent of that rusticity of life and manners so relished by its author. There are no more perfect little gems of portraiture than The Antiquary contains. Here we have Scottish peasant life at its best. The little seaside village, with its play of light and shade, its intrigues, its gossip, its round of comedy and tragedy, are limned by the hand of a Master who makes every one of his characters live and move like real creatures of flesh and blood, rather than of the imagination. For a piece of humorous writing, the post-office scene in the fifteenth chapter has been seldom matched, even by its own author. The locale of the novel is considered to be the fish- ing-villages of the Arbroath coast. Ar- broath itself is Fairport, and either Auch- mitliie or Ethie Haven stands for Mussel- crag. Ethie Castle is the Knockwinnock, 113 8 FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT as Hospitalfield is the Monkbarns of the story. Portobello and Musselburgh are not, as has been suggested, the locahties in question. The figure of the Antiquary was modelled from "that dear friend of my father's," George Constable (see page 27) ; but, as Lockhart says, there is also a hint of Scott himself. Sir Walter does indeed give himself away in his " Gabions " fragment, where he actually assumes the name of Jonathan Oldbuck. Old Sir John Clerk of Dumcrieff was the hero of the story, "Prae- torium here, praetorium there, I made it wi' a flaughter spade." As to the original of Edie Ochiltree— "that mirror of j)hilosophic vagabonds and Nestor of beggars," as Washington Irving described him — there is no dispute. He was Andrew Gemmels, the most noted blue- gown of the Borders, whom Scott had seen at Kelso and elsewhere, and heard from his own lips the story of his soldierings and wanderings after Fontenoy. A songster and a romancer, a mimic, and a satirist of 114 FOOTPRINTS OF WAVERLEY the first water, Andrew was a very persona grata (despite his tongue) throughout his long Kfe spent by Tweed and Teviot. He lived to his 106th year, and was buried at Roxburgh. Lockhart tells how, a few days after the publication of The Antiquary, Scott was visited at Edinburgh by Train, who brought with him several curios for the Abbotsf ord Collection (Rob Roy's spleuchan among them), at the same time handing over a fresh sheaf of traditionary gleanings which he had gathered among the tale-tellers of his district. Next morning, at breakfast, at least two new novels were under discussion. Old Mortality and Roh Roy. To Train is due the honour of having given title to the first of these, taken from Robert Paterson, alias "Old Mortality," into whose mouth the rom- ance was put, as was The Lay into that of the Minstrel. An unconscionably eccentric individual was " Old Mortality's " prototype. A native of Hawick (not Closeburn), and a mason to trade, Paterson developed an ex- 115 FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT traordinary mania for tombstone repara- tions. For over forty years his familiar figure might be encountered in any of the Covenanting burying - grounds through - out Dumfries and Galloway, or Ayrshire. Hardly a monument covering the dust of the faithful but bears his chisel's impress ! Even at Dunnottar, where Scott met him in 1793, he plied his self-imposed task. Un- fortunately, some features in his career are not very creditable. It is impossible, for instance, to condone his treatment of his wife and children, whom he literally abandoned, to such lengths did his passion for the " stones " lead him. Yet, withal, he did a good work. And he inspired Old Mor- tality. His own grave atCaerlaverock stood long unmarked, till the Messrs Black, of London, the publishers of Scott's w^orks, erected the present modest memorial. The scene of Old Mortality is laid chiefly in Clydesdale. Tillietudlem, Lady Bellenden's castle, where Morton besieged his lady-love, and the zealous Cuddie Headrigg was re- 116 FOOTPRINTS OF WAVERLEY pulsed by the scalding kail-brose of the co- quettish Jenny Dennison, had its original in the ruin of Craignethan, once the proper- ty of aLordEvandale. The wild and gloomy glens of Moffat Water, however, and the recesses of Loch Skene and Gameshope — a conventicle region familiar to Scott from early days — were laid under tribute for much of the scenery of the story. Of The Black Dwarf, included with Old Mortality in the Tales of My Landlord, Lockhart states that " however imperfect, and unworthy, as a work of art, it derives a singular interest from its delineation of the dark feelings so often connected with physical deformity." To Scott, though him- self in this category, there were no such feel- ings, — unlike Byron, whose Trhole life was embittered by his defect. A chance meeting some nineteen years previous to the pub- lication of the novel, furnished Scott with the basal matter for his story. On the way to Gilsland, in July 1797, he stayed for a day or two at Hallyards, in Peeblesshire, the 117 FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT Fergusons' summer quarters. Within a mile lived David Ritchie, a dwarf less than three and a half feet in height, the most extraordinary personage in the locality. There is pathos in his past history. " Like a deer hunted froixi the herd," by the deri- sion of his fellow-men he had been driven from his occupation of brush - making (which he seems to have followed both at Edinburgh and at Dublin) to the seclusion of his native glens, "where he sought," says Scott, " to have the least possible commu- nication with the world which scoffed at him." Here he reared a hut of turf and stones, in which, along with a sister, he lived till the year 1802, when the cottage which still bears his name was erected, though that has been altered considerably since his day. The dwarf is described as having an oblong skull, so hard that he could strike it with ease through a door- panel or a barrel-end. He had deep -set black eyes and ogreish features — a long, sharp nose meeting his far-projecting chin; 118 FOOTPRINTS OF WAVERLEY legs like a pair of corkscrews, which were never allowed to be seen ; fin-like feet, on which he never wore shoes, but pieces of cloth ; a screech-owl voice ; and an almost demoniacal laugh. To AVilliam Chambers (who was present) we are indebted for the narrative of Scott's interview with his future hero. The visitor's lameness seemed to engender a bond of sympathy between him and the dwarf. Grinning for a moment with a smile less bitter than his wont, the dwarf crossed to the door, double-locked it, then coming up to the stranger, seized him by the wrist, say- ing, " Man, ha'e ye ony poo'er ? " meaning magical power, to which he himself made some pretence. Scott disavowing the pos- session of any such gift, the dwarf signalled to a huge black cat, which thereupon jumped up and perched itself on a shelf, looking, to the excited senses of the visitors, as if it were verily the familiar spirit of the place. "He has poo'er; ay, he has poo'er," repeated the grotesque figure, seat- 119 FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT ing himself as he spoke, and grinning hor- ribly as if enjoying the weird impression he had made. At this point, Dr Ferguson called to him to undo the door, as they must now be going ; and when the party were once more in the open, Scott was ob- served to be pale as ashes and agitated in every limb. A being so odd, and circumstances so uncanny, were not to be soon forgotten. Hence, in course of time, we have " Bowed Davie," as he was called, passing into the Waverley gallery as Elshie the Recluse, the Black Dwarf of Mucklestane Moor. In the 16th chapter of the novel the interview is reproduced with graphic force. Despite his misanthropic disposition, it should be said that this curious creature exhibited a quite rem.arkable delight in the beauties of nature; that he devoured history vrith avidity ; and had grace enough to appreci- ate the great epics. He died in 1811,^ and ^ The Dwarf was born at Easter Happrew, in the parish of Stobo, in 1740. See Chambers's Life of David Ritchie. 120 FOOTPRINTS OF WAVER LEY was buried in Manor Churchyard, where the brothers Chambers, the pubhshers (na- tives of Peebles), erected a stone over his remains. Westburnfiat is borrowed from Liddesdale. Ellieslaw Castle is thought to be drawn from Goldielands ; according to others, from Garvald, in East Lothian. An- naple, the christian name of the old nurse at Heughfoot, was taken from that of the Dwarf's mother, Annaple Niven. On the last day of 1817 Rob Roy was given to the world, Constable venturing a first e- dition of 10,000, which was followed within a fortnight by a further impression of 3000. A note to Ballantyne with the last proof- sheets recalls the circumstances under which the novel was written: "With great joy I send you Roy. 'Twas a tough job, But we've done with Rob." There is more vmderthe surface of this than mere playful humour, however, for Lock- hart tells us in what shattered state of 121 FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT health Scottwas at the time. Onefearsthat, notwithstanding the "light and airy" char- acter of the composition, Rob Roy was little short of being task-work. "'Tis easy for you to bid me get on," the author said to Ballan- tyne, dunning him for copy, "but how the deuce can I make Rob Roy's wdfe speak with such a curmurring in my guts?" As a matter of fact, it was this year which saw the beginning of Scott's physical decline, that steady, stealing march towards the ma- lady which finally carried him off, though, happily, not for fifteen years afterwards. A line drawn on the map from Glasgow to Stirling and across to Inversnaid, thence by Loch Lomond back to the Clyde, will give us the Rob Roy Country, a triangle of Scotland on which the best of Scott's work had already put its impress. The North- umbrian portion of the story centres round Osbaldistone Hall, probably Biddlestone, near Rothbury, though both Chillingham and Naworth are claimants. Asa character- isation of Scottish life at what maybe called 122 FOOTPRINTS OF WAVERLEY the cateran period, Rob Roy takes high rank indeed. The contrast betwixt Scotsman and Englishman, and Highlander and Low- lander, has a better portrayal here than in any other of the Waverleys. As to origin- als, Di Vernon, beautiful, sprightly, dash- ing, without marrow among the heroines of Scott in her own class, may have been drawn, as Basil Hall supposes, from Jane Anne Cranstoun, Countess von Purgstall, Scott's early confidante ; or, as seems more likely, it may have been his first love who sat for the portrait. The irresponsible Fair- service typifies the ideal serving-man of the period. The Bailie is, of course, the finest of the male characters. He is, for all time, the classic figure of the pawky Low- land merchant — hard but honest, natural and simply cynical, but kindly, good- natured, ever humorous — as true a being of flesh and blood as ever trod the "Saut Mar- ket," in the words of Leslie Stephen. Frank Osbaldistone is an ordinary, easy-going Englishman. Helen MacGregor is not an 123 FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT over-attractive personality, yet what sub- limity there is in the reply of this extraor- dinary woman to someone who called her by the familiar appellation of good womanl "I'm nae good woman — a' the country kens I'm bad eneugh, an' may be sorry eneugh that I am nae better ; but I can do what good women canna an' darena do!" With the next of the Waverleys, which appeared in June 1818, Scott touches high- water mark. The Heart of Midlothian must certainly be placed amongst the five or six of the series that stand in the front rank. Asa picture of mid eighteenth-century Scot- tish life it is unrivalled. In Edinburgh its reception was such as Lockhart "never wit- nessed on the appearance of any other liter- ary no velty,"and the admiration and delight were unbounded all over Scotland. Walter Savage Landor, who had little love for Scott's poetry, says of this novel that if Scott had written nothing else, it would have stamped him the most illustrious author of the age. Its charm and power lie in the path- FOOTPRINTS OF WAVERLEY etic interest of the story, which stirred the sympathy and deep respect of Scott's read- ers more than anything he ever wrote. Jeanie Deans is far and away the sweetest and best of his heroines of humble Kf e, and she is so because she is the least of a hero- ine. The narrative on which Scott reared his romance was obtained from a Dum- fries lady, Mrs Goldie of Craigmuie. Helen Walker, Jeanie's prototype, tramped all the way to London, and with the assistance of the Duke of Argyll saved her sister Isa- bel ("Effie Deans"), lying under sentence of death for infanticide, having previously re- fused (though the official record does not suggest this) to preserve the other's life by giving false testimony. Unlike her proto- type, however, Helen died (in her eightieth year) poor and unmarried, without any of that generous provision which the Duke be- stowed upon his fictitious protegee. Mrs Goldie planned a monument to her memory, but passed away before this could be set up. Her daughter subsequently requested Scott 125 FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT to write the inscription, and offered to col- lect money to carry out her mother's wish. Sir Walter replied that he would do it all himself. Accordingly, a handsome table- stone (not a "little pillar," as Lockhart has it), in the Covenanting churchyard of Iron- gray, carries this most graceful of tributes : THIS STONE WAS ERKCTED BY THE AUTHOR OF WAVEllLEY TO THE MEMORY OF HELEN WALKER, WHO DIED IN THE YEAR OF GOD 1791 THIS HUMBLE INDIVIDUAL PRACTISED IN REAL LIFE THE VIRTUES WITH WHICH FICTION HAS INVESTED THE IMAGINARY CHARACTER OF JEANIE DEANS; REFUSING THE SLIGHTEST DEPARTURE FROM VERACITY, EVEN TO SAVE THE LIFE OF A SISTER, SHE NEVERTHELESS SHOWED HER KINDNESS AND FORTITUDE, IN RESCUING HER FROM THE SEVERITY OF THE LAW, AT THE EXPENSE OF PERSONAL EXERTIONS WHICH THE TIME RENDERED AS DIFFICULT AS THE MOTIVE WAS LAUDABLE. RESPECT THE GRAVE OF POVERTY WHEN COMBINED WITH LOVE OF TRUTH AND DEAR AFFECTION. 126 FOOTPRINTS OF WAVERLEY Though many of the incidents in The Heart of Midlothian occur in widely-separa- ted locaKties, Edinburgh, as the title shows, is its principal arena. It is peculiarly Scott's story of his "own romantic town." No artist lingers more lovingly over his canvas than Scott over his Edinburgh word-pic- tures. The Grassmarket, the site of the Tolbooth, Muschat's Cairn — the scene of Jeanie's and Robertson's midnight meeting — St Anthony's Chapel (a mere shell), Salis- bury Crags, in the neighbourhood of which lay the Deans's homestead, and Arthur's Seat — " a lion couchant" — all these were the cherished landmarks of Scott's golden days. There is no finer reverie than that with which the eighth chapter opens ; but every chapter, to speak truth, affords fresh glimp- ses of the " fascination " (the word used by another Sir Walter with regard to London) by which the whole setting of the city and the continuity of its history had " chained his heart for evermair." Lockhart considers the publication of this 127 FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT novel as the climax of Scott's career. But Ivanhoe and Kenilworth ; The Fortunes of Nigel and Quentin Durward; as well as Red- gauntlet, were still to be written — a noble quintette ! Nevertheless, just at this time it looked as if the romancer's writing days were done. For several months during 1819 Scott lay in Castle Street at death's door — so certain of his end, indeed, that on one occasion he actually took farewell of his family, and Lockhart parted from him " with dark prognostications " that it was for the last time. But his characteristically vigorous constitution carried him through the crisis, though his hair turned snow- white, and he was never quite the same man again. What have been termed the " sick man's romances " bring us, first of all, to the Bor- der with that finest of tragic tales. The Bride of Lammerinoor, whose scenes are al- most entirely laid in East Lothian and the Merse. The story, however, turns on a well- known Wigtownshire tradition, connected 128 FOOTPRINTS OF WAVERLEY with the Stair family, — Janet Dalrymple, wife of David Dunbar, Younger of Bal- doon, being the original of the gentle Lucy Ashton.i The Wolf's Crag is the fragment- ary Fast Castle, while Eyemouth is the Wolf's Hope, the scene of (Jaleb Balder- stone's raiding exploits. The latter, model- led from Andrew Davidson of Tyninghame, is a second Fairservice. "Haud yer tongue, for heaven's sake, sir ; if it's my pleasure to hazard my soul in telling lees for the hon- 1 The tradition of the Bride has been greatly exaggerated. The real facts seem to be these : Janet Dalrymple had pledged her troth to a poor noble, Lord Rutherford, whose suit was resented by her parents. The mother, the wife of the first Lord Stair, the original of Lady Ashton therefore, a proud woman of strong will, exerted all her influence to break off this engagement, and succeeded. Thereupon Janet married Dunbar, August 12, 1669. On the 24th of that month, both bride and bridegroom returned to Baldoon, in the parish of Kirkinner. Shortly afterwards, the bride's health declined and gave way, and she died, probably of a broken heart, on September 12th following. There is not the faintest allusion to any such harrowing catastrophe as that supposed in the novel to have occurred on the night of the marriage. Dunbar, "a cultivated gentleman of unimpeached honour," bore no resemblance to " Bucklaw." He again married, and died in 1682. The marriage contract of David Dunbar and Janet Dalrymple is still extant. 129 9 FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT our of the family, it's nae business o' yours." Winton House is thought to be the Ravens- wood of the tragedy, and the fine old kirk of Pencaitland may easily be the scene of the wedding and burial of the ill-fated Bride. In The Legend of Montrose, which formed the second portion of the third series of the Tales of My Landlord, we are taken to familiar Highland territory. It is the great Dugald Dalgetty of Drumthwacket, that most conceited of wandering Scots, that dauntless soldier of fortune, who really shines in the story. It is consequently a story of a single man only. It may be re- called that Scott got the name as a boy at Prestonpans. The grand old English romance of Ivan- hoe appeared in December 1819, " in the midst of accumulated afflictions." Scott was then in the gloom of solitude, under a deep cloud of sorrow. In this month, within ten days, he lost his mother, an uncle, and an aunt. Ivanhoe w^as received with 130 FOOTPRINTS OF WAVERLEY positive rapture, and in England it is no exaggeration to say that it was welcomed as a national triumph. As a work of art, it is easily the first of all Scott's efforts. Not so, however, from the standpoint of genius. Considered thus, it is a long way behind the first three of the Waverleys. The ori- ginal of Rebecca of York, it is not gener- ally known, was Miss Gratz, a Philadel- phian, of whose beauty and tenderness, and loyalty to her ancient faith, Scott heard from Washington Irving. "How do you like your Rebecca ? Does the Rebecca I have pictured compare with the pattern given ? " he inquired of Irving, in sending him a copy of Ivanhoe. The Monastery (1820) is Scott's solitary romance of the Melrose district. One feels that he missed his chance. Abundant material lay to his hand, had he cared — better themes than the Romish Church at her last gasp. In The Lay, Melrose comes to its own, to be sure; yet the opportunity for a really great and artistic presentation 331 FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT of its finer features and traditions was lost altogether. In Saint Mary's of Kennaquhair we have the venerable religious house, a- mongst whose ruins the laird of Abbots- ford spent many happy hours. Glendearg (formerly Hillslap) and Colmslie, with a third tower, Langshaw, are at the head of the Water of Elwyn, and near its junction with the Tweed is the Fairy or Nameless Dean — Corri-nan-shian — the resort of that most ridiculous personage, the White Lady. Darnick comes into the story, and at Bridgend, close by, is the scene of the sous- ing of the sacristan. Father Philip. Castle Avenel may be Lochside, at Yetholm, or Sandyknowe itself. Clinthill is in Mer- toun parish. The surnames of Happer, Glendinning, Brydone, and Tackit are still common to the localities of the novel. Cap- tain Clutterbuck, who is made to intro- duce The Monastery, was, according to Ro- bert Chambers (though Scott denies it), Adam Ormiston, a Melrose " worthy," who really did know a good deal about the Ab- 132 FOOTPRINTS OF WAVERLEY bey. Mine host of the George, in the open- ing narrative, was David Kyle, and Cap- tain Doolittle was Walter Tait of the Roy- al Marines, a one-legged hero who died in 1836. The Abbot, suggested to Scott during a visit to Blair-Adam, appeared as a sequel to The Monastery in September 1820, and fared better with the public, who, be it said, were not welcoming the novels after Ivanhoe with the same enthusiastic de- light. Kinross and Loch Leven are its chief scenes, and it has Queen Mary for its principal figure. " They may say what they will — many a true heart will be sad for Mary Stuart, e'en if all be true men say of her." These words, which Scott puts into the mouth of one of his characters, well ex- press his own feelings and those of many a man and woman since his day. Kenilworth, a romance of Queen Elizabeth, followed in January. It was one of the most success- ful of all at the time of publication, and must continue to keep its place in the high- 133 FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT est rank of prose fiction. Nor, with the one exception of The Bride of Laininer7noor,has Scott bequeathed us a deeper and more affecting tragedy than that of Amy Hob- sart. The next of the series, The Pirate, was published in the beginning of Decem- ber 1821. When with the Lighthouse Com- missioners, immediately after the publi- cation of Waverley, Scott had gone over practically the whole ground covered by the romance — the Mainland of Shetland. He had climbed Sumburgh Head, where Mertoun rescues Cleveland, cast on the beach. He had visited Mousa Castle, from which he drew the picture of Noma's eyrie, where she compounded the charm to cure Minna's heartache. He had inspected the Stones of Hoy and Stennis, where the Pirate makes his farewell to Minna. There is, in- deed, not one of the novels in which the locality and its life have been so faithfully limned. Minna and Brenda Troil had for their prototypes the two winsome daughters, blonde and brune, of Scott of 134 FOOTPRINTS OF WAVERLEY Deloraine, in Ettrick.^ The Fortunes of Nigel — a London-Scottish romance, the most vivacious of the Waverleys ; Peveril of the Peak, dull, since "smelling of the apo- plexy " ; Quentin Du7'ward, a distinctly noble contribution to the historical novel, and the best in construction of the whole series, were each bargained for and "billed" ere a line was written. So were St Ronans Well and Redgauntlet. The first three transport us furth of Scotland and to mediaeval times. With the last two we are at home and in the modern world. It is curious to note about Nigel that all its chief characters from the King to the hero's servant are Scots. James, and Richie Moni- plies, are the figures that attract us most, though we should perhaps add that of George Heriot — "Jingling Geordie." Dal- garno makes a poor enough show. So does Sir Mungo Malagrowther, believed to be ^ The claim is also made, not without reason, for the two daughters of Roy of Nenthorn, nea^ Kelso, at whose house Scott used to visit ; and also for the nieces of Morritt of Rokeby. 135 FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT drawn from Kirkpatrick Sharpe. John Christie and his frail spouse are sketched to the Ufe. Topographically, Scott's Lon- don is singularly correct, though Hyde Park is made to exist half a century before its time. Quentin Durward, a huge Continental success, was the first book by Scott in which the scene is laid out of the British Isles. To Skene he was indebted for most of his local colour, but there are incidents and reminiscences which savour of Scotland and the writer's own experiences. St Ronaiis Well is the Wizard's one story of con- temporary social life, and far from bril- liant. As Scott, Laidlaw, and Lockhar t were riding along the brow of the Eildons, Scott mentioned the " row " that was going on in Paris about Quentin Durward. "I can't but think I could make better play still with something German," he said. Laidlaw mildly protested. " You are," he said, " al- ways best, like Helen MacGregor, when your foot is on your native heath ; and I 136 FOOTPRINTS OF W A V E 11 L E Y have often thought that if you were to write a novel and lay the scene here in the very year you were writing it, you would exceed yourself." "Hame's hame," quoth Scott, smiling, " be it ever sae hamely"; and Laid- law bade him " stick to Melrose in 1823." Alas, however, the scene w^as not Melrose ! Would it had been ! Strange that again the chance escaped him. The conversation doubtless suggested St Ronans PFeZZ, the lo- cale of which Innerleithen claims for itself, though much of the scenery was probably drawn from Gilsland. Marchthorn may be Peebles (the Earl of March, now Wemyss, being one of its chief landowners) ; and here dwelt Miss Ritchie, the true original of Meg Dods, the termagant landlady of the Cleik- um Inn, which is still in existence. Shaw's Castle may be Traquair House, but the name is suggestive of Gilsland. Dr Duncan of Smailholm stood, so Lockhart says, for the absent-minded Josiah Cargill; but Dr Lawson of Selkirk is a no less likely original. When Redgauntlet came, it proved an 137 FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT excellent foil to St Ronans Well. But it was destined to be the last of the front- rank romances. Historically, in its Jacob- ite temper, it may be said to stand next to Waverley — is pendent to it, indeed. The scene of action is confined to Edinburgh and the Solway shores, where, however, no actual rising on behalf of Charles Edward ever took shape. Redgauntlet Castle is, no doubt,designed from Hoddom Castle, which, from its situation in Cummertrees parish, suggests at once the papistical laird of Summer trees — " Pate-in-Peril." His rather risky adventure at the Devil's Beef Tub evidences Scott's familiarity with the old coach-road between the Crook and Moffat. Joshua and Rachel Geddes (Ruskin's per- fect type of womanhood) were borrowed ftom what Scott saw, in his Kelso boyhood, of the Waldies. Darsie Latimer is Scott's friend Will Clerk ; and the Fairf ords are, of course, Walter Scott phre et fils. Lockhart is surely wrong in seeing in the faithful Purdie a prototype of the villainous Cristal 138 FOOTPRINTS OF WAVERLEY Nixon. Nanty Ewart, the scholarly smug- gler, looks like a model of Paul Jones. The terrible Sir Robert Redgauntlet, in that masterpiece, "Wandering Willie's Tale," the finest short story in the English lan- guage, is Grierson of Lag with a snatch of Claverhouse. For Wandering Willie there is no suggested original, but it is in Dun- score old churchyard (where Lag lies) that his weird narration has its finis. Among the novels of Scott, Redgauntlet will always be reckoned one of the dearest, especially to those who love to trace, through his fiction, the hand as well as the spirit of the Master. It is the memory of his first love, first friendship, filial affection, and first ex- perience of the world, that lights up so much of the book. Whether it be considered as a story, which for variety and excellence of character has never been excelled, as Mr Lang thinks, save by Shakespeare, or taken as a piece of splendidly interesting intro- spective, its niche in the temple of Waver- ley is for ever secure. 139 FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT The remainder of the Waverleys take us to far fields. In 1825 appeared TheBetrothed^ a Welsh story — not a success. See the In- troduction for an interesting legend as to the origin of the Peeblesshire Tweedies. The Talisman (1825), a tale of the Third Cru- sade, derives its title from the famous Lee Penny obtained in the Holy Land by Lock- hart of Lee, in Lanarkshire. The amulet is still preserved — a treasured family heir- loom. We are now at the dark year of Scott's life, with ruin, and the supreme sorrow, of which the critics have made too little, and the loss of " dear 39," following each other in swift, pathetic succession. Then what seemed to be the beginning of the end itself. It was on January 17, 1826, that Skene, calling at Castle Street, found Scott addressing him: "My friend, give me a shake of your hand — mine is that of a beg- gar. Constable has failed, and I am ruined de fond en comhle. It's a hard blow, but I must just bear up ; the only thing which 140 FOOTPRINTS OF WAVERLEY wrings me is poor Charlotte and the bairns." On May 14, " poor Charlotte " had passed " beyond these voices." There were " omin- ous reminders," too, that all was not right with his own health. Yet were there her- culean tasks ahead! And how heroically were they wrestled with to the overcom- ing! Woodstock won him a round £8000, the Life of Napoleon brought grist to the mill to the extent of £18,000. By and by we see him planning the Tales of a Grand- father, which one fears the children of Scot- land are in danger of forgetting ; and The Chronicles of the Canongate, a set of stories from the hypothetical pen of Chrystal Croftangry, "a reduced gentleman," like Caleb Balderstone, who had run through a fortune, and lived his last days near by the Canongate in comfortable proximity to the Holyrood Sanctuary. In the person of Croftangry, Scott gives his readers a some- ways portrait of himself. Of the Tales, there is The Highland Widow, a tragedy of the Awe, inspired by Mrs Bethune Baliol, 141 FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT drawn from Scott's friend Mrs Murray- Keith; The Two Drovers, a dirking catas- trophe which takes place in Cumberland ; and The Surgeons Daughte?-, whose scenes are laid first at Selkirk, the Middlemas of the story, and afterwards in India. Dr Gid- eon Gray is either Mungo Park, or Ebene- zer Clarkson, Scott's own chirurgeon. Of three other short contes from The Keepsake{1829), My Aunt Margaret's Mirror, a Flanders episode, is the best ; Death of the Laird's Jock embodies a legend of Liddes- dale ; and The Tapestried Chamber is a con- ventional West of England ghost story. Among the final considerable Waverleys was The Fair Maid of Perth; or, St Valen- tines Day, in which for the last time we are taken to the Highlands and the "murmur- ing banks of Tay." Interest centres chiefly in the historic combat on the North Inch and the stupendous heroism of Hal o' the Wynd. The Fair Maid's House is still one of the " lions " of the ancient Scottish Cap- ital. Following Anne of Geier stein, a sort of 142 FOOTPRINTS OF WAVER LEY sequel to Quentin Duricard, and Count Robert of Paris, a tale of Byzantine history, Castle Dangerous brings the brilliant pro- cession to a close. With characteristic bra- vado, we have Scott accompanied hj Lock- hart setting out in July for Douglasdale, the scene of the new romance. Past all the old landmarks, every one of them precious to his memory, we see them driv- ing, as Scott well knew, for the last time. They ascended the Tweed, by Yair, Ashe- stiel, Elibank, Innerleithen, and Peebles, as far as the town of Biggar. When near Dro- chil, a Douglas holding, and somewhat off the main track, Scott could scarcely be con- strained from making an effort to reach it. At Douglas he inspected the old Castle, St Bride's Kirk, and the very extraordinary monuments of the most heroic and power- ful family in the annals of Scotland— now the savers, now the betrayers of their country. The meeting (too joyous, one fears) with an old friend, Eliott Lockhart of Cleghorn 143 FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT and Borthwickbrae (long M.P. for Selkirk- shire), had disastrous effects for the latter, himself a paralytic. "When they met," says Lockhart, " each saw his own case glassed in the other, and neither of their manly hearts could well contain itself as they em- braced. Each exerted himself to the utmost, indeed far too much, and they were both tempted to transgress the laws of their phy- sician." The result was a fresh shock to the older invalid, w^ho now lay stricken and despaired of. " This is a sad warning," said Scott, when the news came to him. "I must home to work while it is called to-day ; for the night cometh when no man can work. I put that text many a year ago on my dial- stone ; but it often preached in vain." Alas, even then the shadows were thickening a- round him ! The tired pen was to do little more. A few months and its "work" would be over ! Of confessions by men of letters, has there ever been any more stately, more noble, than this that fell from the lips of the " Author of Waverley " ? "I am draw- 144 FOOTPRINTS OF WAVERLEY ing near to the close of my career ; I am fast shuffling off the stage. I have been, perhaps, the most voluminous author of the day : and it is a comfort to me to think that I have tried to unsettle no man's faith, to corrupt no man's principle, and that I have Yirritten nothing which on my death-bed I should wish blotted." 10 CHAPTER VI "FAIR MELROSE" LOCKHART has an attractive and homely picture of the walk which Scott and Moore took together from Abbotsf ord to Melrose. On the way, they called on Laidlaw at Kae- side, and on the Fergusons at Huntlyburn, visits which greatly charmed the author of Lalla Rookh. At Melrose, Scott ex- plained to his companion " all the parts of the ruin," and had his usual banter with the custodian, Johnny Bower. Sir Walter's love for Melrose and its Abbey is known to all readers of the Life. The place is at the very heart of the Scott homeland. No part of the Border is better known, not only in Scotland itself, but in far fields, and wher- ever the English language is spoken. The situation of Melrose (anciently Fordel), in the long, hill-girt hollow through which 146 "FAIR MELROSE" runs the Tweed in pleasant babble, and under the shadow of the " Eildons, one yet three," has much to commend it. Topo- graphically, Melrose may easily have be- come a popular resort, apart from its liter- ary and romantic associations. But Scott is the true maker of the modern Melrose. It was the writing of The Lay and The Monas- tery, together with the warm, personal ele- ment furnished by the near neighbourhood of Abbotsford, which laid the foundation whereon Melrose has reared its fortunes. The town flourishes on the genius of Scott. A century ago it was obscure enough, de- spite its possession of what Lockhart has styled "the most graceful and picturesque monastic ruin in Scotland." In 1801 the population was between four and five hun- dred. At the time of Scott's death, its inhabitants numbered six hundred and eighty-nine. Twenty years later they were still less than a thousand; now they are about two thousand. When Scott began to build Abbotsford, slated houses were un- 147 FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT known in Melrose. The parish church was part of the Abbey nave, and the St John's Lodge of Freemasons (the oldest in Scot- land) occupied the only other public build- ing in the place. Melrose dates its expansion and its pro- sperity almost entirely from the era of Scott. It has become a sort of Borderland Mecca, where homage is paid fromallpoints of the compass to one who was " the whole world's darling." No town, with the ex- ceptions of Stratford-on-Avon and Ayr, has been dowered with such wealth of literary traditions ; and no ruin, unless it be " Allo- way's auld haunted kirk," has been so en- shrined in the poetical annals of the nation as Melrose Abbey has. The Lay is the in- separable and imperishable memory of Mel- rose. It is not the busy, useful life of that early Cistercian colony which one thinks of in the sunny, grass-grown nave of Mel- rose ; nor is it a remembrance of the dead who have " given their bodies to this holy Abbey to keep " ; neither is it sorrow for 148 "FAIR MELROSE" the fire and sword from over the Border. One thinks rather of William of Deloraine — the monk — the open tomb of the wizard — the bewitching effect of the " pale moon- light," as pictured so exquisitely in the second canto. It is difficult to imagine Mel- rose without the influence of Scott. The revival of a taste for Gothic architecture in the early part of last century did much, doubtless, to foster interest in the ruin, yet how little and how feeble was it all in com- parison with the universal attention which the Wizard of Tweedside has attracted to the pile! The tourist inundations which Melrose witnesses summer after summer care little for the Abbey as such. It is the magnetism of The Lay that makes all the difference. This, however, was not Scott's sole boon to Melrose — to repeople it with the super- sensible and the awesome. How lovingly did he care for the picturesque pile and watch over it! How did he plan and plead on its behalf ! Take, for instance, the f oUow- 149 FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT ing paragraph from the Life : " About this time [1822] Scott's thoughts were much occupied with a plan for securing Melrose Abbey against the progress of decay, which had been making itself manifest to an a- larming extent, and to which he had often before directed the attention of the Buc- cleuch family. Even in writing to persons who had never seen Melrose, he could not keep from touching on this business, for he wrote, as he spoke, out of the fulness of his heart. The young Duke readily concurred with his guardian in allowing the poet to direct such repairs as might seem to him adequate, and the result was extremely satisfactory to all the habitual worshippers of those classical ruins." What the fabric owes to Scott is not suf- ficiently known. Only for him, one fears that the structure might have been in very different circumstances from what it is. Even yet does it merit the most anxious attention (this maybe said of all the Border Abbeys) ; but the fact that the owner of 150 "FAIR MELROSE" Melrose is still a Duke of Buccleuch is as- surance enough that its safety and amenity are in good hands. Melrose, like its sister fanes, owes its establishment to David, the " Sair Sanct." The name was borrowed from that earlier Columban house, two miles further down the Tweed, opposite Bemersyde, and not far from Dryburgh, the site of which is now known as Old Melrose (from Maol-ros, the open or naked headland). Colonised by monks from Lindisfarne, it was at the height of its glory under the priorship of Cuthbert, ^vho was himself a native of the locality. Falling on evil times towards the end of the ninth century, it gradually lost prestige, and became finally extinct as the new Melrose rose in renown. The history of Melrose is virtually that of each of those other splendid homes of piety whose remains, sad in their shattered beauty, still grace the banks of the Tweed and the Jed.^ A period of little more than ^ Chronologically, Jedburgh, founded in 1118, is the old- 151 FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT four hundred years covers their entire Kfe, notwithstanding the rare devotion and the princely benefactions lavished upon them. They came through much tribulation dur- ing the War of Independence, Melrose being totally destroyed then, and rebuilt by the munificence of Robert the Bruce. They were burned and pillaged by the "auld enemy" in 1523, and again at other times; and it was reserved for Hertford and his underlings, agents of the most despicable of English monarchs — Henry VIII. — to complete, in 1544-5, the work of demolition. The ruins stand pretty much as their last desecrators left them. There is no need to rail at the Reformers or at Cromwell for supposed acts of spoliation. They were saved the work, if they had had the will to do it. All that was done fifteen years before est. Kelso comes next, some ten years later. Melrose dates from 1136, and Dryburgh was not begun until 1150. The first three are in Roxburghshire ; the last stands in a corner of Berwickshire, bounded by the "chiming Tweed." It should be stated that Hugh de Morville, Lord of Lauderdale and Constable of Scotland, had a considerable share in the founding of Dryburgh. 152 JEDBURGH ABBEY From a water-colour drazving by TOM SCOTT, R.S.A. "A thousand and a hundyre yhere. And awchtene to rekyne clere, Gedward and Kelsowe Abbayis twa Or Davy was King he founded tha." '■ The sacred tapers' lights are gone. Grey moss has clad the altar stone, The-holy image is o'erthrown. The bell has ceased to toll; The long ribb'd aisles are burst and shrunk, The holy shrines to ruin sunk. Departed is the pious monk — God's blessing on his sotill" SCOTT. "FAIR MELROSE^ the Reformation, and fifty-four years be- fore Cromwell was born. Only one healing influence has been at work since those Sep- tember days which first saw them reduc- ed from the perfection of symmetry and beauty to blackened walls. Time has dealt softly and gently with them, as the rich carving at Melrose abundantly shows; dot- ting them with the growths that cling to ancient ruins, and over all throwing the tender pathos of decay. That Melrose should have fired the imagi- nation of Scott was inevitable. No one knew the ruin so intimately. Next to Ab- botsf ord, Melrose was his favourite haunt. Here he brought most of his visitors. And happy they who had Scott for cicerone! " He'll come here sometimes," said old Bow- er, "with great folks in his company, and the first I'll know of it is hearing his voice calling out,' Johnny! — Johnny Bower!' and when I go out, I'm sure to be greeted with a joke or a pleasant word. He'll stand and crack and laugh wi' me just like an auld 153 FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT wife — and to think that of a man that has such an awfu' knowledge o' history!" Lock- hart saw the ruin for the first time in 1818, and was charmed with Scott's descriptions, both of Melrose and Dryburgh. An in- quiry as to the revenue of the former at its heyday, drew from Scott the answer that he calculated it could hardly be less than £100,000 yearly. Little wonder he makes Captain Clutterbuck say of those old Cistercians that they "had an easy life of it"! He was not unmindful, mayhap, of the taunt : " The monks of Melrose made fat kail On Fridays vvlien they fasted; Nor wanted they gude beef and ale, So lang's their neighbours' lasted." Melrose Abbey has been so often described that minute details are unnecessary, even if space availed for such details. The fabric, as with Abbotsf ord, must be seen to be un- derstood by those who revel in grand archi- tectural designs and rich fanciful decora- tions. Like all ancient churches it is cruci- form, in this instance a Latin cross. From 154 "FAIR MELROSE" the centre rises a square tower, eighty-four feet high, of which only the west side re- mains, resting on a lofty pointed arch whose summit terminated in a stone balus- trade with quatrefoil rails, under which appears in bas-relief a frieze of roses.^ The west end of the nave has entirely disappear- ed, so that the length of that portion of the building cannot be ascertained. From the extremity of the existing edifice to the end of the chancel the measurement is 258 feet, the length of the transept 130 feet, and the breadth of the nave 79 feet within the walls. The most complete parts of the ruin are the south transept door and window, both in the finest style of the Decorated period, the window, indeed, being one of the most beautiful in Britain. The north transept is roofless. One of its windows represents a Crown of Thorns. On the west side, in ^ The rose is everywhere in evidence. It was the Abbots' favourite flower, and held to be emblematic of the locality. Figures of a mason's mallet (Scottice, a mell) and a rose are fre- quent. The rebus is incorporated into the arms of the burgh. See the Mercat-Cross, and several of the public buildings. 155 FOOTSTEPS OF SCOTT two elevated niches, are statues of the Apostles Peter and Paul. Beneath is a door of Saxon architecture leading into a low vaulted apartment — the Sacristy pro- bably, but traditionally known as the Wax Cellar. A small door on the west side of the south transept, which displays a portion of the original ribbed and groined roof, opens to a staircase winding to the top by seventy- four steps, and leading to galleries which doubtless communicated with all parts of the building. Above this door is a carved shield with compasses and jfleurs-de-lys, and the legend, now indecipherable, ^a gagsi gc cumpajs cbgn about ^a trottti) anb lautc iio but buitc ^cl)alti to ge Ijenbe q. goljnc JHororo.^ Who this Morow was, and what was his connection with Melrose, is seen from the inscription upon another tablet a little to ^ Some words are apparently missing. The idea is that as the compass goes round with a uniform exactness, so is it with Truth. The remainder of the inscription is not unlikely to be an expression of praise {lautc) for the termination of the work carried out under the superintendence of Morow, who was a medieval architect of note, and a Frenchman. 156 "FAIR MELROSE" the left. This, which has nearly always been copied incorrectly, is arranged as follows, without any date: |oI)n : JEoroto : sfumtgrne : callit : SMaiS : I : anb : born : in : Ipargsisfe : dcrtainlg : anJ) : l)ab : in kcping ^11 : majson : rocrk : of : .^antan : Prugsi : gc : l)jic : kirk : of : Slajs (StD : pclrojS : anb : PajJleg : of : HgblJgjstianU : anb : of : Saltoas : >I