Life of Sir Walter Scott, with Abbotsford Notanda

by Robert Chambers; Robert Carruthers

ABBOTSFORD NOTANDA.

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The death of Mr William Laidlaw, a man of fine natural powers, and of most estimable character, removed another of the few individuals connected directly and confidentially with the daily life and literary history of Sir Walter Scott, and also with the revival of the antique Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. The loss of Hogg, while the twilight from Scott’s departed greatness still shone on the land, was universally regretted; and by the death of Laidlaw, another ‘flower of the forest,’ less bright, but a genuine product of the soil, was ‘wede away.’ As the author of one of our sweetest and most characteristic Scottish ballads, Lucy’s Flittin’, and as a collaborateur with Scott in the collection of the ancient minstrelsy, Laidlaw is entitled to honourable remembrance. Let us never forget those who have added even one wild-rose to the chaplet of Scottish song! It is chiefly, however, as the companion and factor or land-steward of Scott, that William Laidlaw will be known in after-times. During most of those busy and glorious years when Scott was pouring out so prodigally the treasures of his prose fictions, and building up his baronial romance of Abbotsford, Laidlaw was his confidential adviser and assistant. From 1817 to 1832, he was resident on the poet’s estate, and emphatically one of his household friends. Not a shade of distrust or estrangement came between them; and this close connection, notwithstanding a disparity in circumstances and opinions, in fame and worldly consequence, is too honourable to both parties to be readily forgotten. The manly kindness and consideration of one noble nature was paralleled by the affectionate devotion and admiration of another; and literary history is brightened by the rare conjunction.

Scott’s early excursions to Liddesdale and Ettrick form one of the most interesting epochs of his life. He was then young, not great, but prosperous, high-spirited, and overflowing with enthusiasm. His appointment as sheriff had procured him confidence and respect. He had given hostages to fortune as a husband and a father, and no one felt more strongly the force and tenderness of those ties. Friends were daily gathering round him; his German studies and ballads inspired visions of literary distinction; and he was full of hope and ambition. In his Border raids, he revelled among the choice and curious stores of Scottish poetry and antiquities. Almost every step in his progress was marked by some memorable deed or plaintive ballad—some martial achievement or fairy superstition. Every tragic tale and family tradition was known to him. The old peels, or castles, the bare hills and treeless forest, and solitary streams were all sacred in his eyes. They told of times long past—of warlike feuds and forays—of knights and freebooters, and of primitive manners and customs, fast disappearing, yet embalmed in songs, often rude and imperfect, but always energetic or tender. Thus, the Border towers, and streams, and rocks were equally dear to him as memorials of feudal valour, and as the scenes of lyric poetry and pastoral tranquillity. He contrasted the strife and violence of the warlike Douglases, the Elliots, and Armstrongs, with the peace and security of later times, when shepherds ranged the silent hill, or Scottish maidens sang ancient songs, and, like the Trojan dames,

‘Washed their fair garments in the days of peace.’

Much of this romance was in the scene, but more was in the mind of the beholder.

William Laidlaw’s acquaintance with Scott commenced in the autumn of 1802, after two volumes of the Minstrelsy had been published, and the editor was making collections for a third. The eldest son of a respectable sheep-farmer, Mr Laidlaw was born at Blackhouse, Selkirkshire, in November 1780. He had received a good education, had a strong bias towards natural history and poetry, was modest and retiring, and of remarkably mild and agreeable manners. The scheme of collecting the old ballads of the Forest was exactly suited to his taste. Burns had filled the whole land with a love of song and poetry, James Hogg was his intimate friend and companion. Hogg had been ten years a shepherd with Mr Laidlaw’s father, had taught the younger members of the family their letters, and recited poetry to the old, and was engaged in every ploy and pursuit at Blackhouse, the name of the elder Laidlaw’s farm.

A solitary and interesting spot is Blackhouse!—a wild extensive sheep-walk, with its complement of traditional story, and the suitable accompaniment of a ruined tower. The farm lies along the Douglas Burn, a small mountain-stream which falls into the Yarrow about two miles from St Mary’s Loch. Near the house, at the foot of a steep, green hill, and surrounded with a belting of trees, is Blackhouse Tower, or the Tower of Douglas, so called, according to tradition, after the Black Douglas, one of whose ancestors, Sir John Douglas of Douglas-burn, as appears from Godscroft’s history of the family, sat in Malcolm Canmore’s first parliament. The tower has in one corner the remains of a round turret, which contained the stair, and the walls rise in high broken points, which altogether give the ruin a singular and picturesque appearance. It is also the scene of a popular ballad, The Douglas Tragedy, in which, as in the old Elizabethan dramas, blood is shed and horrors are accumulated with no sparing hand. A knightly lover, the ‘Lord William’ of so many ballads, carries off a daughter of Lord Douglas, and is pursued by this puissant noble and his seven sons. All these are slain by Lord William, while the fair betrothed looks on, holding his steed; and the lover himself is mortally wounded in the combat, and dies ere morn. The lady also falls a prey to her grief; and, in the true vein of antique story and legend, we are told

‘Lord William was buried in St Mary’s kirk,

Lady Margaret in Mary’s quire;

Out o’ the lady’s grave grew a bonny red rose,

And out o’ the knight’s a brier.’

The tower and legend interested Scott as they had done Laidlaw. He listened attentively to the traditionary narrative, and, like the lovers in the ballad,

‘He lighted down to take a drink

Of the spring that ran sae clear,’

and visited the seven large stones erected upon the neighbouring heights of Blackhouse to mark the spot where the seven brethren were slain.

Mr Laidlaw was prepared for Scott’s mission. He had heard from a Selkirk man in Edinburgh, Mr Andrew Mercer—a Border rhymester, and connected with the Edinburgh Magazine—that the sheriff was meditating a poetical raid into Ettrick, accompanied by John Leyden, and he had written down various ballads from the recitation of old women and the singing of the servant-girls. He had also enlisted the Ettrick Shepherd into this special service. The following is one of Hogg’s rambling bizarre epistles, which relates chiefly to the ballad of the Outlaw Murray:

‘Dear Sir—I received yours, with the transcript, on the day before St Boswell’s Fair’ [17th of July], ‘and am sorry to say it will not be in my power to procure you manuscripts of the two old ballads, especially as they which Mr Scott hath already collected are so near being published. I was talking to my uncle concerning them, and he tells me they are mostly escaped his memory, and they really are so—in so much, that of the whole long transactions betwixt the Scottish king and Murray, he cannot make above half-a-dozen of stanzas to metre, and these are wretched. He attributed it to James V., but as he can mention no part of the song or tale from whence this is proven, I apprehend, from some expressions, it is much ancienter. Upon the whole, I think the thing worthy of investigation—the more so as he’ [Murray of the ballad] ‘was the progenitor of a very respectable family, and seems to have been a man of the utmost boldness and magnanimity. What way he became possessed of Ettrick Forest, or from whom he conquered it, remains to me a mystery. When taken prisoner by the king at Permanscore, above Hanginshaw, where the traces of the encampments are still visible, and pleading the justice of his claim to Ettrick Forest, he hath this remarkable expression:

“I took it from the Soudan Turk

When you and your men durstna come see.”[3]

Who the devil was this Soudan Turk? I would be very happy in contributing any assistance in my power to the elucidating the annals of that illustrious and beloved though now decayed house, but I have no means of accession to any information. I imagine the whole manuscript might be procured from some of the connections of the family. Is it not in the library at Philiphaugh?[4] As to the death of the Baron of Oakwood and his brother-in-law on Yarrow, if Mr Mercer or Mr Scott, or either of them, wisheth to see it poetically described, they might wait until my tragedy is performed at the Theatre-royal; and if that shall never take place, they must sit in darkness and the shadow of death for what light the poets of Bruce’s time can afford them!

‘I believe I could get as much from these traditions as to make good songs out of them myself. But without Mr Scott’s permission this would be an imposition; neither would I undertake it without an order from him in his own handwriting, as I could not bring my language to bear with my date. As a supplement to his songs, if you please, you may send him the one I sent last to you: it will satisfy him, yea or nay, as to my abilities. Haste; communicate this to him; and ask him if, in his researches, he hath lighted on that of John Armstrong of Gilnockie Hall, as I can procure him a copy of that. My uncle says it happened in the same reign with that of Murray, and if so, I am certain it has been written by the same bard. I could procure Mercer some stories—such as the tragical, though well-authenticated one of the unnatural murder of the son and heir of Sir Robert Scott of Thirlstane, the downfall of the family of Tushilaw, and the horrid spirit that still haunts the Alders. And we might give him that of John Thomson’s Aumrie, and the Bogle of Bell’s Lakes.

‘My muse still lies dormant, and with me must sleep for ever, since a liberal public hath not given me what my sins and mine iniquities deserved.—I am yours for ever.

James Hogg.

‘July 20th, 1801.’

The ‘liberal public’ had given a reception ‘the north side of friendly,’ as Bailie Nicol Jarvie says, to a small publication which made its appearance about six months before the date of the above letter, entitled ‘Scottish Pastorals, Poems, &c., by James Hogg, Farmer at Ettrick’—a most unlucky speculation.

Mr Laidlaw was constantly annoyed, he said, to find how much the affectation and false taste of Allan Ramsay had spoiled or superseded many striking and beautiful old strains of which he got traces and fragments, and how much Scott was too late in beginning his researches, as many aged persons, who had been the bards and depositaries of a former generation, were then gone.

‘I heard,’ he says, ‘from one of our servant-girls, who had all the turn and qualifications for a collector, of a ballad called Auld Maitland, that a grandfather of Hogg’s could repeat, and she herself had several of the first stanzas (which I took a note of, and have still the copy). This greatly aroused my anxiety to procure the whole, for this was a ballad not even hinted at by Mercer in his list of desiderata received from Mr Scott. I forthwith wrote to Hogg himself, requesting him to endeavour to procure the whole ballad. In a week or two, I received his reply, containing Auld Maitland exactly as he had copied it from the recitation of his uncle, Will Laidlaw of Phawhope, corroborated by his mother, who both said they learned it from their father, a still older Will of Phawhope, and an old man called Andrew Muir, who had been servant to the famous Mr Boston, minister of Ettrick.’[5] These services of the olden time were marked by reciprocal kindness and attachment, not unworthy of the patriarchal age. Son succeeded father in tending the hirsel or herding the cows, while in the case of ‘the master,’ the same hereditary or family succession was often preserved.

The person of the sheriff was not unknown to the new friend with whom he was afterwards destined to form so intimate a connection. ‘I first saw Walter Scott,’ Laidlaw used to relate, ‘when the Selkirk troop of yeomanry met to receive their sheriff shortly after his appointment. I was on the right of the rear rank, and my front-rank man was Archie Park, a brother of the traveller. Our new sheriff was accompanied by a friend, and as they retired to the usual station of the inspecting officer previous to the charges, the wonderful springs and bounds which Scott made, seemingly in the excitation and gaiety of his heart, joined to the effect of his fine fair face and athletic appearance, were the cause of a general murmur of satisfaction, bordering on applause, which ran through the troop. Archie Park looked over his shoulder to me, and growled, in his deep rough voice: “Will, what a strong chield that would have been if his right leg had been like his left ane!”’

Scott and Leyden duly appeared at Blackhouse, carrying letters of introduction. They put up their horses, and experienced a homely unostentatious hospitality, which afterwards served to heighten the delightful traits of rustic character in the delineation of Dandie Dinmont’s home at Charlies-Hope. If the sheriff did not ‘shoot a blackcock and eat a blackcock too,’ the fault was not in his entertainers. After the party had explored the scenery of the burn, and inspected Douglas Tower, Laidlaw produced his treasure of Auld Maitland. Leyden seemed inclined to lay hands on the manuscript, but the sheriff said gravely that he would read it. Instantly both Scott and Leyden, from their knowledge of the subject, saw and felt that the ballad was undoubtedly ancient, and their eyes sparkled as they exchanged looks. Scott read with great fluency and emphasis. Leyden was like a roused lion. He paced the room from side to side, clapped his hands, and repeated such expressions as echoed the spirit of hatred to King Edward and the Southrons, or as otherwise struck his fancy. ‘I had never before seen anything like this,’ said the quiet Laidlaw; ‘and, though the sheriff kept his feelings under, he, too, was excited, so that his burr became very perceptible.’ The wild Border energy and abruptness are certainly seen in such verses as these:

‘As they fared up o’er Lammermore,

They burned baith up and down,

Until they came to a darksome house;

Some call it Leader-Town.

“Wha hauds this house?” young Edward cried,

“Or wha gies’t ower to me?”

A gray-haired knight set up his head,

And crackit right crousely:

“Of Scotland’s king I haud my house;

He pays me meat and fee;

And I will keep my gude auld house

While my house will keep me.”

They laid their sowies to the wall,

Wi’ mony a heavy peal;

But he threw ower to them agen

Baith pitch and tar barrel.

With springalds, stanes, and gads of airn,

Among them fast he threw;

Till mony of the Englishmen

About the wall he slew.

Full fifteen days that braid host lay,

Sieging auld Maitland keen,

Syne they hae left him, hail and fair,

Within his strength of stane.’

Scott valued this ballad and his other lyrical acquisitions highly. In a letter to Mr Laidlaw, dated 21st January 1803, he remarks as follows: ‘Auld Maitland, laced and embroidered with antique notes and illustrations, makes a most superb figure. I have got, through the intervention of Lady Dalkeith, a copy of Mr Beattie of Meikledale’s Tamlane. It contains some highly poetical stanzas descriptive of fairy-land, which, after some hesitation, I have adopted, though they have a very refined and modern cast. I do not suspect Mr Beattie of writing ballads himself; but pray, will you inquire whether, within the memory of man, there has been any poetical clergyman or schoolmaster whom one could suppose capable of giving a coat of modern varnish to this old ballad. What say you to this, for example?

“We sleep on rose-buds soft and sweet,

We revel in the stream,

We wanton lightly on the wind,

Or glide on a sunbeam.”

This seems quite modern, yet I have retained it.’

Laidlaw had procured a version of another ballad, The Demon Lover, which he took down from the recitation of Mr Walter Grieve, then in Craik, on Borthwick Water. Grieve sung it well to a singularly wild tune; and the song embodies a popular but striking superstition, such as Lewis introduced into his romance of The Monk. To complete the fragment, Laidlaw added the 6th, 12th, 17th, and 18th stanzas; and those who consult the ballad in Scott’s Minstrelsy will see how well our friend was qualified to excel in the imitation of these strains of the elder muse. After the party had ‘quaffed their fill’ of old songs and legendary story, they all took horse, and went to dine with Mr Ballantyne of Whitehope, the uncle of Laidlaw.

‘There was not a minute of silence,’ says Mr Laidlaw’s memorandum, ‘as we rode down the narrow glen, and over by the way of Dryhope, to get a view of St Mary’s Loch and of the Peel or Tower. When we entered the Hawkshaw-doors, a pass between Blackhouse and Dryhope, where a beautiful view of the lake opens, Leyden, as I expected, was so struck with the scene that he suddenly stopped, sprung from his horse (which he gave to Mr Scott’s servant), and stood admiring the fine Alpine prospect. Mr Scott said little; but as this was the first time he had seen St Mary’s Loch, doubtless more was passing in his mind than appeared. Often, when returning home with my fishing-rod, had I stopped at this place, and admired the effect of the setting sun and the approaching twilight; and now when I found it admired by those whom I thought likely to judge of and be affected with its beauty, I felt the same sort of pleasure that I experienced when I found that Walter Scott was delighted with Hogg. Had I at that time been gifted with a glimpse—a very slight glimpse—of the second-sight, every word that passed, and they were not few, until we reached Whitehope or Yarrow Church, I should have endeavoured to record. Scott, as all the world knows, was great in conversation; and Leyden was by no means a common person. He had about him that unconquerable energy and restlessness of mind that would have raised him, had he lived, very high among the remarkable men of his native country. I cannot forget the fire with which he repeated, on the Craig-bents, a half-stanza of an irrecoverable ballad—

“Oh swiftly gar speed the berry-brown steed

That drinks o’ the Teviot clear!”—

which his friend, when finally no brother to it could be found, adopted in the reply of William of Deloraine to the Lady of Branksome.’

The regret that Laidlaw here expresses at having omitted to note down the conversation of his friends is extremely natural, but few men could be less fitted for such a task. He had nothing of Boswell in his mind or character. He wanted both the concentration of purpose and the pliant readiness of talent and power of retention. At Abbotsford he had ample opportunities for keeping such a record, and he was often urged to undertake it. Scott himself on one occasion, after some brilliant company had left the room, remarked half jocularly, that many a one meeting such people, and hearing such talk, would make a very lively and entertaining book of the whole, which might some day be read with interest. Laidlaw instantly felt it necessary to put in a disclaimer. He said he would consider it disreputable in him to take advantage of his position, or of the confidence of private society, and make a journal of the statements and opinions uttered in free and familiar conversation. We may respect the delicacy and sensitiveness of his feelings, but society, collectively, would lose much by the rigid observance of such a rule. The question, we think, should be determined by the nature and quality of the circumstances recorded. It must be a special, not a general case. There is nothing more discreditable in noting down a brilliant thought or interesting fact, than in repeating it in conversation; while to play the part of a gossiping and malicious eavesdropper, is equally a degradation in life and in literature. It would have been detestable (if the idea could for a moment be entertained) for Mr Laidlaw to pry into the domestic details and personal feelings or failings of his illustrious friend at Abbotsford; but we may wish that his pen had been as ready as his ear when Scott ran over the story of his literary life and opinions, or discriminated the merits of his great contemporaries—when Davy expatiated on the discoveries and delights of natural philosophy—when Miss Edgeworth painted Irish scenes and character—when Moore discoursed of poetry, music, and Byron—when Irving kindled up like a poet in his recollections of American lakes, and woods, and old traditions—when Mackintosh began with the Roman law, and ended in Lochaber—when some septuagenarian related anecdotes of the past—when artists and architects talked of pictures, sculpture, and buildings—or when some accomplished traveller and savant opened up the interior of foreign courts and the peculiarities of national manners. Many a wise and witty saying and memorable illustration—the life-blood of the best books—might thus have been preserved, though with occasional lacunæ and mistakes; and all are now lost—

‘Gone glittering through the dream of things that were’—

and cannot be recalled. Surely society is the worse for the loss of these racy, spontaneous fruits of intellect, study, and observation.

While dinner was getting ready at Whitehope, Laidlaw and Leyden strolled into the neighbouring churchyard of Yarrow, and saw the tomb of Mr Rutherford, the first minister of that parish after the Revolution, and the maternal great-grandfather of Scott. Leyden recited to his companion the ballads of The Eve of St John and Glenfinlas, which naturally impressed on the hearer a vivid idea of the poetical talents of the sheriff, and Laidlaw felt towards him as towards an old friend. This was increased by Scott’s partiality for dogs. He was struck with a very beautiful and powerful greyhound which followed Laidlaw, and he begged to have a brace of pups from the same dog, saying he had now become a forester, as sheriff of Ettrick, and must have dogs of the true mountain breed. ‘This request,’ said the other, ‘I took no little pains to fulfil. I kept the puppies till they were nearly a year old. My youngest brother, then a boy, took great delight in training them; and the way was this: he took a long pole having a string and a piece of meat fastened to it, and made the dogs run in a circular or oval course. Their eagerness to get the meat gave them, by much practice, great strength in the loins, and singular expertness in turning, besides singular alertness in mouthing, for which they were afterwards famous. Scott hunted with them for two years over the mountains of Tweedside and Yarrow, and never dreamed that a hare could escape them. He mentions them in the Introduction to the second canto of Marmion—

“Remember’st thou my greyhounds true?

O’er holt or hill there never flew,

From slip or leash there never sprang,

More fleet of foot, or sure of fang.”’

After this visit, Laidlaw doubled his diligence in gathering up fragments of the elder Muse, and the sheriff was profuse in acknowledgments:

‘My dear Sir—I am very much obliged to you for your letter and the enclosure. The Laird o’ Logie is particularly acceptable, as coming near the real history. Carmichael, mentioned in the ballad, was the ancestor of the Earl of Hyndford, and captain of James VI.’s guard, so that the circumstance of the prisoner’s being in his custody is highly probable. I will adopt the whole of this ballad instead of the common one called Ochiltree. Geordie I have seen before: the ballad is curious, though very rude. Ormond may be curious, but is modern. The story of Confessing the Queen of England is published by Bishop Percy, so I will neither trouble you about that nor about Dundee. “Glendinning” is a wrong reading: the name of the Highland chief who carries off the lady is Glenlyon, one of the Menzieses. Among Hogg’s ballads is a curious set of Lamington or Lochinvar, which I incline to adopt as better than that in the Minstrelsy. Who was Katherine Janfarie, the heroine? She could hardly be a damsel of rank, as the estate of Whitebank is an ancient patrimony of the Pringles. I don’t know what to make of Cockburn’s name, unless it be Perys, the modern Pierce, which is not a common name in Scotland. I am very much interested about the Tushilaw lines, which, from what you mention, must be worth recovering. I forgot to bring with me from Blackhouse your edition of the Goshawk, in which were some excellent various readings. I am so anxious to have a complete Scottish Otterburn, that I will omit the ballad entirely in the first volume, hoping to recover it in time for insertion in the third. I would myself be well pleased to delay the publication of all three for some time, but the booksellers are mutinous and impatient, as a book is always injured by being long out of print. As to the Liddesdale traditions, I think I am pretty correct, although doubtless much more may be recovered. The truth is that, in these traditions, as you must have observed, old people are usually very positive about their own mode of telling a story, and as uncharitably critical in their observations on those who differ from them.—Yours faithfully,

Walter Scott.’

Before the friends parted, Scott made a note of Hogg’s address, and from that time never ceased to take a warm interest in his fortunes. He corresponded with him, and becoming curious to see the poetical Shepherd, made another visit to Blackhouse, for the purpose of getting Laidlaw along with him as guide to Ettrick. The visit was highly agreeable. The sheriff’s bonhomie and lively conversation had deeply interested his companion, and he rode by his side in a sort of ecstasy as they journeyed again by St Mary’s Loch and the green hills of Dryhope, which rise beyond the wide expanse of smooth water. It was a fine summer morning, and the impressions of the day and the scene have been recorded in imperishable verse.[6] Dryhope Tower, so intimately associated with the memory of Mary Scott, the ‘Flower of Yarrow,’ made the travellers stop for a brief space; and Dhu Linn (where Marjory, the wife of Percy de Cockburn, sat while men were hanging her husband), with Chapelhope and other scenes and ruins famous in Border tradition, deeply interested Scott. At the west end of the Loch of the Lowes, the surrounding mountains close in, in the face of the traveller, apparently preventing all farther egress. At this spot, as Laidlaw was trying to find a safe place where they might cross the marsh through which the infant Yarrow finds its way to the loch, Scott’s servant, an English boy, rode up, and, touching his hat, respectfully inquired, with much interest, where the people got their necessaries! This unromantic question, and the naïveté of the lad’s manner, was a source of great amusement to the sheriff. The day’s journey was a favourite theme with Laidlaw. First, after passing the spots we have described, the horsemen crossed the ridge of hills that separates the Yarrow from her sister stream. These hills are high and green, but the more lofty parts of the ridge are soft and boggy, and they had often to pick their way, and proceed in single file. Then they followed a foot-track on the side of a long cleugh or hope, and at last descended towards the Ettrick, where they had in view the level green valley, walled in by high hills of dark green, with here and there gray crags, the church and the old place of Ettrick Hall in ruins, embosomed in trees. Scott was somewhat chafed by having left in his bedroom that morning his watch—a valuable gold repeater, presented to him on the occasion of his marriage—and to Laidlaw’s ejaculations of delight he sometimes replied quickly: ‘A savage enough place—a very savage place.’ His good-humour, however, was restored by the novelty of the scenes and the fine clear day, and he broke out with snatches of song, and told endless anecdotes, either new, or better told than ever they were before. The travellers went to dine at Ramsey-cleugh, where they were sure of a cordial welcome and a good farmer’s dinner; and Laidlaw sent off to Blackhouse for the sheriff’s watch (which he received next morning), and to Ettrick House for Hogg, that he might come and spend the evening with them. The Shepherd (who then retained all his original simplicity of character) came to tea, and he brought with him a bundle of manuscripts, of size enough at least to shew his industry—all of course ballads, and fragments of ballads. The penmanship was executed with more care than Hogg had ever bestowed on anything before. Scott was surprised and pleased with Hogg’s appearance, and with the hearty familiarity with which Jamie, as he was called, was received by Laidlaw and the Messrs Bryden of Ramsey-cleugh. Hogg was no less gratified. ‘The sheriff of a county in those days,’ said Laidlaw, ‘was regarded by the class to whom Hogg belonged with much of the fear and respect that their forbears looked up to the ancient hereditary sheriffs, who had the power of pit and gallows in their hands; and here Jamie found himself all at once not only the chief object of the sheriff’s notice and flattering attention, but actually seated at the same table with him.’ Hogg’s genius was sufficient passport to the best society. His appearance was also prepossessing. His clear ruddy cheek and sparkling eye spoke of health and vivacity, and he was light and agile in his figure. When a youth, he had a remarkably fine head of long curling brown hair, which he wore coiled up under his bonnet; and on Sundays, when he entered the church and let down his locks, the lasses (on whom Jamie always turned an expressive espiègle glance) looked towards him with envy and admiration. He doubtless thought of himself as the Gaelic bard did of Allan of Muidart—

‘And when to old Kilphedar’s church

Came troops of damsels gay,

Say, came they there for Allan’s fame,

Or came they there to pray?’

Mr Laidlaw thus speaks of the evening at Ramsey-cleugh: ‘It required very little of that tact or address in social intercourse for which Mr Scott was afterwards so much distinguished, to put himself and those around him entirely at their ease. In truth, I never afterwards saw him at any time apparently enjoy company so much, or exert himself so greatly—or probably there was no effort at all—in rendering himself actually fascinating; nor did I ever again spend such a night of merriment. The qualities of Hogg came out every instant, and his unaffected simplicity and fearless frankness both surprised and charmed the sheriff. They were both very good mimics and story-tellers born and bred; and when Scott took to employ his dramatic talent, he soon found he had us all in his power; for every one of us possessed a quick sense of the ludicrous, and perhaps of humour of all kinds. I well recollect how the tears ran down the cheeks of my cousin, George Bryden; and although his brother was more quiet, it was easy to see that he too was delighted. Hogg and I were unbounded laughers when the occasion was good. The best proof of Jamie’s enjoyment was, that he never sung a song that blessed night, and it was between two and three o’clock before we parted.’

Next morning, Scott and Laidlaw went, according to promise, to visit Hogg in his low thatched cottage. The situation is fine, and the opposite mountains, from the grand simplicity of their character, may almost be termed sublime. The Shepherd and his aged mother—‘Old Margaret Laidlaw,’ for she generally went by her maiden name—gave the visitors a hearty welcome. James had sent for a bottle of wine, of which each had to take a glass; and as the exhilarating effects of the previous night had not quite departed, he insisted that they should help him in drinking every drop in the bottle. Had it been a few years earlier in Scott’s life, and before he was sheriff of the county, the request would probably have been complied with; but on this occasion the bottle was set aside. The scene was curious and interesting. ‘Hogg may be a great poet,’ said Scott, ‘and, like Allan Ramsay, come to be the founder of a sort of family.’ Hogg’s familiarity of address, mingled with fits of deference and respect towards the sheriff, was curiously characteristic. Many years after this, we recollect a gentleman asking Laidlaw about an amusing anecdote told of the Shepherd. Hogg had sagacity enough to detect the authorship of the Waverley novels long before the secret was divulged, and had the volumes as they appeared bound and lettered on the back ‘Scott’s Novels.’ His friend discovered this one day when visiting Hogg at Altrive, and, in a dry humorous tone of voice, remarked: ‘Jamie, your bookseller must be a stupid fellow to spell Scots with two ts.’ Hogg is said to have rejoined: ‘Ah, Watty, I am ower auld a cat to draw that strae before.’ Laidlaw laughed immoderately at the story, but observed: ‘Jamie never came lower down than Walter.’ Lockhart, however, appears to think he did occasionally venture on such a descent.

From Hogg’s cottage the party proceeded up Rankleburn to see Buccleuch, and inspect the old chapel and mill. They found nothing at the kirk of Buccleuch, and saw only the foundations of the chapel. Scott, however, was in high spirits, and, being a member of the Edinburgh Light Cavalry, and Laidlaw one of the Selkirkshire Yeomanry, they sometimes set off at a gallop—the sheriff leading as in a mimic charge, and shouting: ‘Schlachten, meine kinder, schlachten!’ Hogg trotted up behind, marvelling at the versatile powers of the ‘wonderful shirra.’ They all dined together with a ‘lady of the glen,’ Mrs Bryden, Crosslee; and next morning Scott returned to Clovenford Inn, where he resided till he took a lease of the house of Ashestiel.

Amidst these and similar scenes, Walter Scott inhaled inspiration, and nursed those powers which afterwards astonished the world. The healthy vigour of his mind, and his clear understanding, grew up under such training, and his imagination was thence quickened and moulded. Byron studied amidst the classic scenes of Greece and Italy—Southey and Moore in their libraries, intent on varied knowledge. All the ‘shadowy tribes of mind’ were known to the metaphysical Coleridge. Wordsworth wandered among the lakes and mountains of Westmoreland, brooding over his poetical and philosophical theories, from which his better genius, in the hour of composition, often extricated him. Scott was in all things the simple, unaffected worshipper of nature and of Scotland. His chivalrous romances sprung from his national predilections; for the warlike deeds of the Border chiefs first fired his fancy, and directed his researches. In these mountain excursions he imbibed that love and veneration of past times which coloured most of his compositions; and human sympathies and solemn reflections were forced upon him by his intercourse with the natives of the hills, and the simple and lonely majesty of the scenes that he visited. These early impressions were never forgotten. Nor could there have been a better nursery for a romantic and national poet. Scholastic and critical studies would have polished his taste and refined his verse; but we might have wanted the strong picturesque vigour—the simple direct energy of the old ballad style—the truth, nature, and observation of a stirring life—all that characterises and endears old Scotland. Scott’s destiny was on the whole pre-eminently happy; and when we think of the fate of other great authors—of Spenser composing amidst the savage turbulence of Ireland—of Shakspeare following a profession which he disliked—of Milton, blind and in danger—Dante in exile—and Tasso and Cervantes in prison—we feel how immeasurably superior was the lot of this noble free-hearted Scotsman, whose genius was the proudest inheritance of his country. ‘Think no man happy till he dies,’ said the sage. Scott’s star became dim, but there was only a short period of darkness, and he never ‘bated one jot of heart or hope,’ nor lost the friendly and soothing attentions of those he loved. The world’s respect and admiration he always possessed.

The Minstrelsy appeared complete in the spring of 1803—the first two volumes being then reprinted, and a third volume added, containing the editor’s more recent collections. The work was very favourably received: indeed, so valuable a contribution to our native literature had not appeared since the publication of Percy’s Reliques. And the Introduction is an admirable historical summary, foreshadowing Scott’s future triumphs as a prose writer.[7]

The sheriff made four visits to Blackhouse, the fourth time in company with his attached friend, Mr Skene of Rubislaw. All the party turned out to visit a fox-hunt, a successful one, for the fox was killed; and Mr Skene made a spirited drawing of the scene, including a portrait of old Will Tweedie, the fox-hunter. The visit was closed by the whole party riding to see the wild scenery of the Grey Mare’s Tail and Loch Skene, Hogg and Adam Ferguson being of the party. Laidlaw thus writes of the expedition to Moffatdale:

‘We proceeded with difficulty up the rocky chasm to reach the foot of the waterfall. The passage which the stream has worn by cutting the opposing rocks of grey-wacke, is rough and dangerous. My brother George and I, both in the prime of youth, and constantly in the habit of climbing, had difficulty in forcing our way, and we felt for Scott’s lameness. This, however, was unnecessary. He said he could not perhaps climb so fast as we did, but he advised us to go on, and leave him. This we did, but halted on a projecting point before we descended to the foot of the fall, and looking back, we were struck at seeing the motions of the sheriff’s dog Camp. The dog was attending anxiously on his master; and when the latter came to a difficult part of the rock, Camp would jump down, look up to his master’s face, then spring up, lick his master’s hand and cheek, jump down again, and look upwards, as if to shew him the way, and encourage him. We were greatly interested with the scene. Mr Scott seemed to depend much on his hands and the great strength of his powerful arms; and he soon fought his way over all obstacles, and joined us at the foot of the Grey Mare’s Tail, the name of the cataract.’

This excursion, like most of the others, Scott described in Marmion (Introd. to Canto II.) He was apt, on a journey among the hills, especially if the district was new to him, to fall at times into fits of silence, revolving in his mind, and perhaps throwing into language, the ideas that were suggested at the moment by the landscape; and hence those who had often been his companions knew the origin of many of the beautiful passages in his future works. Of this Laidlaw used to relate one instance. About a mile down Douglas-burn, a small brook falls into it from the Whitehope hills; and at the junction of the streams, at the foot of a bank celebrated in traditionary story, stood the withered remains of what had been a very large old hawthorn tree, that had often engaged the attention of the young men at Blackhouse. Laidlaw on one occasion pointed out to the sheriff its beautiful site and venerable appearance, and asked him if he did not think it might be centuries old, and once a leading object in the landscape. As the district had been famous for game and wild animals, he said there could be little doubt that the red deer had often lain under the shade of the tree, before they ascended to feed on the open hill-tops in the evening. Scott looked on the tree and the green hills, but said nothing. The enthusiastic guide repeated his admiration, and added, that Whitehope-tree was famous for miles around; but still Scott was silent. The subject was then dropped; ‘but some years afterwards,’ said Laidlaw, ‘when the sheriff read to me his manuscript of Marmion, I found that Whitehope-tree was not forgotten, and that he had felt all the associations it was calculated to excite.’ The description of the thorn is eminently suggestive and beautiful:

‘The scenes are desert now and bare,

Where flourished once a Forest fair,

When these waste glens with copse were lined,

And peopled with the hart and hind.

Yon Thorn, perchance, whose prickly spears

Have fenced him for three hundred years,

While fell around his green compeers—

Yon lonely Thorn, would he could tell

The changes of his parent dell.’[8]

We may here notice another poetical scene, the Bush aboon Traquair, celebrated in the well-known popular song by Crawford. Burns says that when he saw the old bush in 1787, it was composed of eight or nine ragged birches, and that the Earl of Traquair had planted a clump of trees near the place, which he called ‘The New Bush.’ Laidlaw maintained that the new bush was in reality the old bush of the song. One of the sons of Murray of Philiphaugh used to come over often on foot, and meet one of the ladies of Traquair at the Cless, a green hollow at the foot of the hill that overhangs Traquair House. This was the scene of the song. The straggling birches that Burns saw are half a mile up the water, the remains of a wooded bog—out of sight of Traquair House, to be sure, but far out of the way between Hanginshaw, on the Yarrow, and Traquair.

One morning in autumn 1804 was vividly impressed on the recollection of Laidlaw; for Scott then recited to him nearly the whole of the Lay of the Last Minstrel, as they journeyed together in the sheriff’s gig up Gala Water. The wild, irregular structure of the poem, the description of the old minstrel, the goblin machinery, the ballads interspersed throughout the tale, and the exquisite forest scenes (the Paradise of Ettrick), all entranced the listener. Now and then, Scott would stop to tell an anecdote of the country they were passing through, and afterwards, in his deep serious voice, resume his recitation of the poem. Laidlaw had, the night before, gone to Lasswade, where the sheriff then resided in a beautiful cottage on the banks of the Esk; and on the following morning, after breakfast, they went up the Gala, when Scott poured forth what truly seemed to be an unpremeditated lay. They returned about sunset, and found the sheriff’s young and beautiful wife looking on at the few shearers engaged in cutting down their crop in a field adjoining the cottage. Mrs Scott seemed to Laidlaw a ‘lovely and interesting creature,’ and the sheriff met her with undisguised tenderness and affection. This was indeed his golden prime:

‘How happily the days of Thalaba went by!’

After this period, Laidlaw commenced householder, entering on extensive farming experiments; and, so long as the war lasted and high prices prevailed, his schemes promised to be ultimately successful. But with peace came a sudden fall in the market value of corn. He struggled on with adverse circumstances for a twelvemonth, till capital and credit failed, and he was obliged to abandon his lease.

In the summer of 1817, we find him at Kaeside, on the estate of Abbotsford. At first, this seemed a temporary arrangement. The two friends had kept up a constant intercourse after Scott’s visit to the Yarrow in 1802. Presents of trout and blackcock from the country, and return presents of books from Castle Street, in Edinburgh, were interchanged; and, when Laidlaw’s evil day was at hand, Scott said: ‘Come to Abbotsford, and help me with my improvements. I can put you into a house on the estate—Kaeside—and get you some literary work from the Edinburgh publishers.’ The offer was cheerfully accepted, and the connection became permanent. Scott had then commenced building and planting on a large scale; and the same year he made his most extensive purchase—the lands of Toftfield, for which he gave £10,000.

‘I have more than once—such was his modesty’—said Laidlaw, ‘heard Sir Walter assert that had his father left him an estate of £500 or £600 a year, he would have spent his time in miscellaneous reading, not writing. This, to a certain extent, might have been the case; and had he purchased the property of Broadmeadows, in Yarrow, as he at one time was very anxious to do, and when the neighbourhood was in the possession of independent proprietors, the effect might have been the same. At Abbotsford, surrounded by little lairds, most of them ready to sell their lands as soon as he had money to advance, the impulse to exertion was incessant; for the desire to possess and to add increased with every new acquisition, until it became a passion of no small power. Then came the hope to be a large landed proprietor, and to found a family.’

When the poet was in Edinburgh attending to his official duties as Clerk of Session, he sighed for Abbotsford and the country, and took the liveliest interest in all that was going on under the superintendence of his friend. Passages like the following remind us of the writings of Gilpin and Price on forest and picturesque scenery:

‘George must stick in a few wild-roses, honeysuckles, and sweet-briers in suitable places, so as to produce the luxuriance we see in the woods which Nature plants herself. We injure the effect of our plantings, so far as beauty is concerned, very much by neglecting underwood.... I want to know how you are forming your glades of hard wood. Try to make them come handsomely in contact with each other, which you can only do by looking at a distance on the spot, then and there shutting your eyes as you have done when a child looking at the fire, and forming an idea of the same landscape with glades of woodland crossing it. Get out of your ideas about expense. It is, after all, but throwing away the price of the planting. If I were to buy a picture worth £500, nobody would wonder much. Now, if I choose to lay out £100 or £200 to make a landscape of my estate hereafter, and add so much more to its value, I certainly don’t do a more foolish thing. I mention this, that you may not feel limited so much as you might in other cases by the exact attention to pounds, shillings, and pence, but consider the whole on a liberal scale. We are too apt to consider plantations as a subject of the closest economy, whereas beauty and taste have even a marketable value after the effects come to be visible. Don’t dot the plantations with small patches of hard wood, and always consider the ultimate effect.’

It is pleasant to see from the Laidlaw manuscripts with what alacrity and zeal the noble friends of the poet came forward with kindly contributions. The Duke of Buccleuch sent bushels of acorns; the Earl of Fife presented seed of Norway pines; Lord Montagu forwarded a box of acorns and a packet of lime-seed. One arboricultural missive to the factor says: ‘I send the seeds of the Corsican pine, got with great difficulty, and also two or three of an unknown species which grows to a great height on the Apennines. Dr Graham says they should be raised in mould, finely prepared, under glass, but without artificial heat.’ A box of fine chestnuts came from Lisbon: the box was sent on from Edinburgh to Abbotsford unopened, and before Laidlaw heard of them, the chestnuts were peeled, and rendered useless for planting. ‘Confound the chestnuts, and those who peeled them!’ exclaimed Scott; ‘the officious blockheads did it by way of special favour.’ One object was to form at the top of the dikes an impenetrable copse or natural hedge or verdurous screen—the poet uses all the epithets (Milton has ‘verdurous wall’); and for this purpose there were sent from Edinburgh 3000 laburnums, 2000 sweet-briers, 3000 Scotch elms, 3000 horse-chestnuts, loads of hollies, poplars for the marshy ground, and filberts for the glen. The graceful birch-tree, ‘the lady of the wood,’ was not, of course, neglected. ‘I am so fond of the birch,’ writes the poet; ‘and it makes such a beautiful and characteristic underwood, that I think we can hardly have too many. Besides, we may plant them as hedges.’ He purchased at this time about 100,000 birches. Mr Morritt of Rokeby writes to a friend: ‘He (Scott) tells me he never was so happy in his life as in having a place of his own to create. In this Caledonian Eden, he labours all day with his own hands; though, since the Fall, he and his wife will not find many luxuriant branches to prune in Ettrick Forest I sent him a bushel of Yorkshire acorns, which, except docks and thistles, are, I believe, likely to be in three years the largest vegetables upon the domain.’[9]

‘There are many little jobs about the walks,’ writes the busy and happy laird, ‘which, though Tom Purdie contemns them, are not less necessary towards comfort: a seat or two, for example, and covering any drains, so as to let the pony pass. In the front of the old Rispylaw (now Anne’s Hill) is an old quarry, which, a little made up and accommodated with stone seats and some earth to grow a few honeysuckles and sweet-briers, would make a very sweet place. Many of the walks will thole’ [bear] ‘a mending; for instance, that to the thicket might be completely gravelled, as Mrs Scott uses it so much.’

Here the kindly, loving nature of the man peeps out. To Tom himself, Scott writes in a big, plain, round hand:

‘As Mrs Scott comes out on the 22d, and brings some plants to cover the paling of the court, you must have a border of about a spade’s breadth and a spade’s depth dug nicely, and made up with good earth and a little dung, all along in front of the paling, and along the east end of it. She will bring the plants from Edinburgh, so they can be put into the ground the evening she arrives.’

Afterwards, as years ran on, a thread of business was intermixed with the rural pleasure. The poet began to calculate on the probable return from the woods, not omitting the value of the bark used for tanning purposes.

‘Dear Willie—How could you be such a gowk’ [fool] ‘as to suppose I meant to start a hare upon you by my special inquiries about the bark? I am perfectly sensible you take more care of my affairs than you would of your own; but anything about wood or trees amuses me, and I like to enter into it more particularly than into ordinary farming operations. In particular, this of drying and selling our bark—at present a trifle—is a thing which will one day be of great consequence, and I wish to attend to the details myself. I think it should not be laid on the ground, but dried upon stools made of the felled wood; and if you lay along these stools the peeled trees, and pile the bark on them, it will hide the former from the sun, and suffer them to dry gradually. I have been observing this at Blair-Adam. I have got a new light on larch-planting from the Duke of Athole’s operations. He never plants closer than eight feet, and says they answer admirably. If this be so, it will be easy to plant our hill-ground. Respecting the grass in the plantations, I have some fears of the scythe, and should prefer getting a host of women with their hooks, which would also be a good thing for the poor folks.’ [Another touch of the poet’s kindly nature.] ‘Tom must set about it instantly. He is too much frightened for the expense of doing things rapidly, as if it were not as cheap to employ twelve men for a week as six men for a fortnight.—Yours,

W. S.’

In the matter of dwellings for the small tenants and labourers, the laird of Abbotsford was equally careful and considerate. ‘I think stone partitions would be desirable on account of vermin, &c. If their houses are not comfortable, the people will never be cleanly. For windows I would much prefer the cast-iron lattices, turning on a centre, and not made too large. These windows being in small quarrels, or panes, a little breach is easily repaired, and saves the substitute of a hat or clout through a large hole. Certainly the cottages should be rough-plastered.’ Perhaps the little iron lattices were as much preferred for their antique, picturesque associations as for their utility—‘something poetical,’ as Pope’s old gardener said of the drooping willow; and the aged minstrel’s hut near Newark Tower, it will be recollected, had such a window:

‘The little garden hedged with green,

A cheerful hearth and lattice clean.’

When times were hard and winter severe, he thought of the firesides of the labourers:

‘Dear Sir—I have your letter, and have no doubt in my own mind that a voluntary assessment is the best mode of raising money to procure work for the present sufferers, because I see no other way of making this necessary tax fall equally upon the heritors.... I shall soon have money, so that if you can devise any mode by which hands can be beneficially employed at Abbotsford, I could turn £50 or £100 extra into that service in the course of a fortnight. In fact, if it made the poor and industrious people a little easier, I should have more pleasure in it than in any money I ever spent in my life.—Yours, very truly,

W. S.’

The same year, which was a period of some excitement and discontent, he writes to Laidlaw:

‘I am glad you have got some provision for the poor. They are the minors of the state, and especially to be looked after; and I believe the best way to prevent discontent is to keep their minds moderately easy as to their own provision. The sensible part of them may probably have judgment enough to see that they could get nothing much better for their class in general by an appeal to force, by which, indeed, if successful, ambitious individuals might rise to distinction, but which would, after much misery, leave the body of the people just where it found them, or rather much worse.... Political publications must always be caricatures. As for the mob of great cities, whom you accuse me of despising too much, I think it is impossible to err on that side. They are the very riddlings of society, in which every useful cinder is, by various processes, withdrawn, and nothing left but dust, ashes, and filth. Mind, I mean the mob of cities, not the lowest people in the country, who often, and, indeed, usually, have both character and intelligence.’

Again:

‘I think of my books amongst this snow-storm; also of the birds, and not a little of the poor. For benefit of the former, I hope Peggy throws out the crumbs; and a corn-sheaf or two for the game would be to purpose, if placed where poachers could not come at them. For the poor people, I wish you to distribute five pounds or so among the neighbouring poor who may be in distress, and see that our own folks are tolerably off.’

Scott introduced his friendly factor to Blackwood’s Magazine, and Laidlaw used to compile for it a monthly chronicle of events, besides occasionally contributing a descriptive article, which the ‘Great Magician’ overhauled previous to its transmission. There was, in the autumn of 1817, a great combustion in Edinburgh about the Chaldee Manuscript, inserted in the magazine for October. An edition of two thousand copies was soon sold, and fifteen hundred more were printed; so Blackwood writes to Scott. ‘He was dreadfully afraid,’ says Laidlaw, ‘that Mr Scott would be offended; and so he would, he says, were it not on my account.’ The Ettrick Shepherd (who was the original concocter of the satire) was also alarmed. ‘For the love of God, open not your mouth about the Chaldee Manuscript,’ he writes to Laidlaw. ‘There have been meetings and proposals, and an express has arrived from Edinburgh to me. Deny all knowledge, else, they say, I am ruined,’ &c. This once famous production is so local and personal that, although it is now included in Professor Wilson’s works, it is almost unknown to the present generation. The subject is a bookseller’s quarrel, a contest between the rival magazines of Blackwood and Constable, and it is one of the most harmless of all the parodies couched in Scriptural phraseology. Professor Ferrier, the editor of Wilson’s works, says it is quite as good, in its way, as Swift’s Battle of the Books; but this is a monstrous delusion. There are some quaint touches of character in the piece. It may be compared to the parodies by Hone; but it is a sort of profanation to place it on a level with the classic satire of Swift.

It is never too late to do justice. In one of these magazine missives, written in January 1818, Blackwood refers to the Ettrick Shepherd. ‘If you see Hogg, I hope you will press him to send me instantly his Shepherd’s Dog, and anything else. I received his Andrew Gemmells; but the editor is not going to insert it in this number.’ [Had Ebony really an editor, or was he not himself the great sublime?] ‘I expected to have received from him the conclusion of the Brownie of Bodsbeck; there are six sheets of it already printed.’

Now, the latter part of this extract seems distinctly to disprove a charge which Hogg thoughtlessly brought against Mr Blackwood. His novel, the Brownie of Bodsbeck, was published in 1818, and he suffered unjustly, as he states in his autobiography, with regard to that tale, as it was looked upon as an imitation of Scott’s Old Mortality. It was wholly owing to Blackwood, he asserts, that his story was not published a year sooner; and he relates the case as a warning to authors never to intrust booksellers with their manuscripts. But the fact is, Old Mortality was published in December 1816; and we have Blackwood, in the above letter to Laidlaw, stating that he had not, in January 1818—more than a twelvemonth afterwards—received the whole of the ‘copy’ of the Brownie of Bodsbeck. How could he go to press with an unfinished story? How make bricks without straw? The accusation is altogether a myth, or, to use one of the Shepherd’s own expressions, ‘a mere shimmera’ [chimera] ‘of the brain.’

Of Hogg’s prose works, Scott writes: ‘Truly, they are sad daubing, with, here and there, fine dashes of genius.’ The daubing is chiefly seen in the dialogues and attempts at humour; the genius appears in the descriptions of pastoral or wild scenery, as in the account of the ‘Storms,’ and in the fine introduction to the Brownie of Bodsbeck, and in some of the delineations of humble Scottish life and superstition. Hogg is as true and literal as Crabbe. His peasants always speak and think as peasants; but he gives us, sometimes, coarse and poor specimens. It is certain, however, that, even in the worst of his stories, there are gleams of fancy—‘fairy blinks of the sun’—far above the reach of writers immensely his superiors in taste and acquirements.

There was another person in whom Scott was interested with reference to the slashing articles in Blackwood’s Magazine. He writes to Laidlaw: ‘So they let poor Charles Sharpe alone, they may satirise all Edinburgh, your humble servant not excepted.’ Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, with his antiquarian tastes, personal oddities, and aristocratic leanings, was a special favourite with Scott. He was a kind of Scotch Horace Walpole (so considered by his illustrious friend), but much feebler; perhaps stronger with the pencil, but infinitely weaker with the pen. His celebrated sketch of the ‘Inimitable Virago,’ or Queen Elizabeth dancing disposedly, as described by the Scotch ambassador, Sir James Melville, was esteemed by Scott as an unrivalled production. It is highly ludicrous and effective as a picture, but is too extravagant to serve even as a caricature representation of Elizabeth. Neither face nor figure has any resemblance. Hogarth, in his etching of old Simon Lord Lovat of the ’45, seems, by a happy stroke of genius, to have hit the true medium in works of this class. He preserved the strong points in personal appearance and character—combining them with irresistible humour and drollery of expression.

Here is another scrap:

‘I am glad to send you Maga, which continues to be clever. I hope for two or three happy days on the brae-sides about the birthday’ [the king’s birthday, June 4]. ‘Blackwood has been assaulted by a fellow who came from Glasgow on purpose, and returned second-best. The bibliopole is like the little French lawyer, who never found out he could fight till he was put to it, and was then for cudgelling all and sundry. You never saw anything so whimsical.

‘I think often, of course, about my walks; and I am sickening to descend into the glen at the little waterfall by steps. We could cut excellent ones out where the quarry has been. It is the only way we shall ever make what Tom Purdie calls a neat job; for a deep descent will be ugly, and difficult to keep. I would plant betwixt the stair and the cascade, so as to hide the latter till you came down to the bottom.’

Visitors now began to appear at Abbotsford, an increasing stream every season from 1817 to 1825. They consisted of persons of rank and fashion, literary men and artists of all nations, who travelled to the Tweed to pay homage to the poet. There was no envy or jealousy with the Great Minstrel. Indeed, with the single exception of Byron, his position was such that he had no cause to fear any rival, and he could afford to throw largess to the crowd. All were welcome at Abbotsford. Washington Irving has described the cordial reception he experienced on the occasion of his visit in 1817, and Laidlaw thus notes the event:

‘We had a long walk up by the glen and round by the loch. It was fine sunshine when we set out, but we met with tremendous dashing showers. Mr Irving told me he had a kind of devotional reverence for Scotland, and most of all for its poetry. He looked upon it as fairy-land, and he was beyond measure surprised at Mr Scott, his simple manners and brotherly frankness. He was very anxious to see Hogg, and said that several editions of Hogg’s different poems had been published in America.’

Irving always regretted that he had not met with the Shepherd. Such a meeting could not have failed to give infinite pleasure to both. The gentle manners and literary enthusiasm of the American author would at once have attached the Shepherd; while the rustic frankness, liveliness, and perfect originality of Hogg possessed an indescribable attraction and charm which the other would have fully appreciated. Many years after this period, Hogg retained a careless brightness of conversation and joyous manner which were seen in no other man. The union of the shepherd and the poet formed a combination as rare and striking as that of the soldado with the divinity student of Marischal College, in the person of the renowned Dugald Dalgetty.

One day, after Hogg had been in London—and ‘The Hogg,’ as Lockhart said, ‘was the lion of the season’—Allan Cunningham chanced to meet James Smith of the Rejected Addresses at the table of the great bibliopole, John Murray. ‘How,’ said Smith, aloud, to Allan, ‘how does Hogg like Scotland’s small cheer after the luxury of London?’ ‘Small cheer!’ echoed Allan; ‘he has the finest trout in the Yarrow, the finest lambs on its braes, the finest grouse on its hills, and, besides, he as good as keeps a sma’ still’ [smuggled whisky]. ‘Pray, what better luxury can London offer?’ All these sumptuosities the Shepherd cheerfully shared with the wayfarers who flocked to Altrive Cottage.

Another visitor at Abbotsford during the season of 1817, was Lady Byron. ‘I have had the honour,’ says Laidlaw, ‘of dining in the company of Lady Byron and Lord Somerville. Her ladyship is a beautiful little woman with fair hair, a fine complexion, and rather large blue eyes; face not round. She looked steadily grave, and seldom smiled. I thought her mouth indicated great firmness, or rather obstinacy. Miss Anne Scott and Lady Byron rode to Newark.’ After the date of this visit by Lady Byron, Laidlaw says he had many conversations with Scott concerning the life and poetry of Byron. ‘He seemed to regret very much that Byron and he had not been thrown more together. He felt the influence he had over his great contemporary’s mind, and said there was so much in it that was very good and very elevated, that any one whom he much liked could, as he (Scott) thought, have withdrawn him from many of his errors.’

All went on smoothly and gaily at Abbotsford. Every year had added to the beauty of the poet’s domain, and to the richness of his various collections and library. His opinion of Gothic architecture is thus expressed: ‘I have got a very good plan from Atkinson for my addition, but I do not like the outside, which is modern Gothic, a style I hold to be equally false and foolish. Blore and I have been at work to Scotify it, by turning battlements into bartisans, and so on. I think we have struck out a picturesque, appropriate, and entirely new line of architecture.’ Abbotsford must certainly be considered picturesque, but it is a somewhat incongruous, ill-placed pile; and without the beautiful garden-screen in front, the general effect would be heavy.

In the Waverley Novels, then appearing in that marvellously rapid succession which astonished the world, there was an ample reservoir of wealth, if it had been wisely secured, as well as of fame. But an alarming interruption was threatened by the illness of the novelist. His malady—cramp of the stomach, with jaundice—was attended with exquisite pain; but in the intervals of comparative ease his literary labours were continued; and it certainly is an extraordinary fact in literary history that under such circumstances the greater part of the Bride of Lammermoor, the whole of the Legend of Montrose, and almost the whole of Ivanhoe were produced. The novelist lay on a sofa, dictating to John Ballantyne or to Laidlaw; chiefly to the latter, as he was always at hand, whereas Ballantyne was only an occasional visitor at Abbotsford. Sometimes, in his most humorous or elevated scenes, Scott would break off with a groan of torture, as the cramp seized him, but when the visitation had passed, he was ever ready gaily to take up the broken thread of his narrative and proceed currente calamo. It was evident to Laidlaw that before he arrived at Abbotsford (generally about ten o’clock) the novelist had arranged his scenes for the day, and settled in his mind the course of the narrative. The language was left to the inspiration of the moment; there was no picking of words, no studied curiosa felicitas of expression. Even the imagery seemed spontaneous. Laidlaw abjured with some warmth the old-wife exclamations which Lockhart ascribes to him—as, ‘Gude keep us a’’—‘The like o’ that!’—‘Eh, sirs! eh, sirs!’ But he admitted that while he held the pen he was at times so deeply interested in the scene or in the development of the plot, that he could not help exclaiming: ‘Get on, Mr Scott, get on!’ on which the novelist would reply, smiling: ‘Softly, Willie; you know I have to make the story,’ or some good-humoured remark of a similar purport. It was quite true, he said, that when dictating some of the animated scenes and dialogues in Ivanhoe, Scott would rise from his seat and act the scene with every suitable accompaniment of tone, gesture, and manner. Both the military and dramatic spirit were strong in him—too strong even for the cramp and calomel! The postscript to a short business letter from Edinburgh, June 14, 1819, refers to this business of dictation. ‘Put your fingers in order, and buy yourself pens!—I won’t stand the expense of your quills, so pluck the goose ’a God’s name!’ And it was plucked on this occasion to record the sorrows of the Bride of Lammermoor.

According to Mr Laidlaw, Scott did not like to speak about his novels after they were published, but was fond of canvassing the merits and peculiarities of the characters while he was engaged in the composition of the story. ‘He was peculiarly anxious,’ says Laidlaw, ‘respecting the success of Rebecca in Ivanhoe. One morning, as we were walking in the woods after our forenoon’s labour, I expressed my admiration of the character, and, after a short pause, he broke out with: “Well, I think I shall make something of my Jewess.” Latterly, he seemed to indulge in a retrospect of the useful effect of his labours. In one of these serious moods, I remarked that one circumstance of the highest interest might and ought to yield him very great satisfaction—namely, that his narratives were the best of all reading for young people. I had found that even his friend Miss Edgeworth had not such power in engaging attention. His novels had the power, beyond any other writings, of arousing the better passions and finer feelings; and the moral effect of all this, I added, when one looks forward to several generations—every one acting upon another—must be immense. I well recollect the place where we were walking at this time—on the road returning from the hill towards Abbotsford. Sir Walter was silent for a minute or two, but I observed his eyes filled with tears.... I never saw him much elated or excited in composition but one morning, out of doors, when he was composing that simple but humorous song, Donald Caird. I watched him limping along at good five miles an hour along the ridge or sky-line opposite Kaeside, and when he came in, he recited to me the fruits of his walk. His memory was an inexhaustible repertory, so that Hogg, in his moments of super-exaltation and vanity, used to say that if he had the shirra’s memory he would beat him as a poet!’

The memory of Sir Walter Scott was vast, but inexact. In this respect he was inferior to Macaulay or Sir James Mackintosh. In quoting poetry, Sir Walter was seldom verbally correct, and sometimes the harmony of the verse suffered. The two famous lines of Milton’s Comus:

‘The aery tongues that syllable men’s names,

On sands, and shores, and desert wildernesses,’

are thus given in the Letters on Demonology:

‘The aery tongues that syllable men’s names,

On shores, in desert sands, and wildernesses.’

Thomas Campbell used to relate, as an instance of Sir Walter’s extraordinary memory, that he read to him his poem of Locheil’s Warning before it was printed; after which his friend asked permission to read it himself. He then perused the manuscript slowly and distinctly, and on returning it to its author, said: ‘Campbell, look after your copyright, for I have got your poem.’ And he repeated, with very few mistakes, the whole sixty lines of which the poem (which was subsequently enlarged) then consisted.

Hogg was generally exalted and buoyant enough. On one occasion we find him writing to Laidlaw: ‘I rode through the whole of Edinburgh yesterday in a barouche by myself, having four horses and two postillions! Never was there a poet went through it before in such style since the world began!’ We may exclaim with Johnson on the amount of Goldsmith’s debts, ‘Was ever poet so trusted before!’

In the midst of his business details and directions, Scott’s peculiar humour and felicity of illustration are perpetually breaking out. Of a neighbouring county magnate he says: ‘I have heard of a Christian being a Jew, but our friend is the essence of a whole synagogue.’ His relation of the simplest occurrence is vivid and characteristic. A high wind in Edinburgh, in January 1818, he thus notices: ‘I had more than an anxious thought about you all during the gale of wind. The Gothic pinnacles were blown from the top of Bishop Sandford’s Episcopal chapel at the end of Princes Street, and broke through the roof and flooring, doing great damage. This was sticking the horns of the mitre into the belly of the church. The devil never so well deserved the title of Prince of the power of the air, since he has blown down this handsome church, and left the ugly mass of new building standing on the North Bridge.’ One incidental remark illustrates the deception men often practise on themselves: ‘I have not,’ he says, ‘a head for accounts, and detest debt. When I find expense too great, I strike sail, and diminish future outlay, which is the only principle for careless accountants to act upon.’ Happy would it have been for him if his practice had corresponded with his theory!

The year 1820 was, in the family calendar of the poet, one of peculiar interest and importance. It was the year in which his eldest daughter was married; the year in which he received the honour of the baronetcy; and the year in which he sat to Chantrey for his bust—that admirable work of art which has made his features familiar in every quarter of the globe. He sat also this year to Sir Thomas Lawrence. ‘The king,’ he writes, ‘has commanded me to sit to Sir Thomas Lawrence for a portrait, for his most sacred apartment. I want to have in Maida’ [his favourite deer-hound], ‘that there may be one handsome fellow of the party.’ Late in life, Sir Walter sat to Lawrence Macdonald the sculptor, and Laidlaw says of the artist and his work:

‘We were much pleased with some days of Macdonald the sculptor, who modelled Sir Walter while he was dictating to me. Macdonald’s model was in a higher style of art than Chantrey’s, and from that cause, had not so much character. Macdonald confessed this was not so much his object. It was a faithful likeness, nevertheless, but not so familiar. For the same reason, he would not take the exact figure of the head, which is irregular. Chantrey likewise declined to shew this, which the phrenologists will probably regret.’

Mr Lawrence Macdonald still lives to delight his friends, and pursue his art in Rome, where he has long resided. He has no recollection of the ‘irregularity,’ referred to. Laidlaw knew nothing of art, and by ‘high style,’ he probably meant an idealised likeness—a look to ‘elevate and surprise.’ The extreme length of the upper lip was a personal characteristic of Sir Walter, which he was glad to see artists reduce, and which none of the portraits fully represents. It is by no means uncommon among the stalwart men of the Border, but is unquestionably a defect as respects personal appearance. The Stratford bust of Shakspeare, it will be recollected, has the same long upper lip, as well as the memorable high forehead, that distinguished Scott. Of Chantrey, Laidlaw writes:

‘I met at breakfast Chantrey the sculptor, a real blunt, spirited, fine Yorkshireman, with great good-humour, and an energy of character about him that would have made his fortune—and a great one—had he gone to London as a tailor. He killed a fine salmon in the Tweed, and led another a long time, but let it go among the great stones and cut his line. Colonel Ferguson said he believed he would rather have given his best statue than lost the fish.’

Chantrey was an enthusiastic angler.

The baronetcy was a step of rank which Sir Walter said was the king’s own free motion, and none of his seeking. To a lady whom he highly esteemed—the late Hon. Mrs Stewart Mackenzie of Seaforth—he wrote:

‘The circumstance of my children being heirs to their uncle’s fortune, relieved me in a great degree of the chief objection to accepting with gratitude what was so graciously offered, namely, that which arose from a more limited income than becomes even the lowest step of hereditary rank.... Mr Lockhart, to whom Sophia is now married, is the husband of her choice. He is a man of excellent talents, master of his pen and of his pencil, handsome in person, and well-mannered, though wanting that ease which the usage du monde alone can give. I like him very much; for having no son who promises to take a literary turn, it is of importance to me, both in point of comfort and otherwise, to have some such intimate friend and relation, whose pursuits and habits are similar to my own—so that, upon the whole, I trust I have gained a son instead of losing a daughter.’[10]

Early next year (1821), Scott was in London, and on February 16, took place the unfortunate duel, in which John Scott, editor of the London Magazine, fell. The antagonist of John Scott was Mr Christie, a barrister, the friend of Lockhart. ‘I have had much to plague me here,’ writes Sir Walter, ‘besides the death of John Scott, who departed last night; so much for being slow to take the field!’ And in another letter he recurs to the subject: ‘The death of my unlucky namesake, John Scott, you will have heard of. The poor man fought a most unnecessary duel to regain his lost character, and so lost his life into the bargain.’ The loss of life was chiefly owing to the blundering of John Scott’s second in the duel, who permitted a second fire to take place after Mr Christie had discharged his pistol down the field.

The visit of King George IV. to Scotland in 1822, was an event sure to call forth the enthusiastic loyalty of Sir Walter. His Majesty’s personal attentions, besides the distinction of the baronetcy, elicited his warmest gratitude, and, in addition, all his fervid nationality and veneration for the throne were kindled on this occasion. To see the king in the ancient palace of Holyrood, was itself an incident like the realisation of a dream. The whole city was in a state of frantic excitement: ‘Edinburgh is irrecoverably mad,’ said Scott. To Laidlaw, the chivalrous poet writes:

‘Dear Willie—You are quite right in your opinion of Saunders. He never shewed himself a more true-blooded gentleman. The extreme tact and taste of all ranks has surprised the king and all about him. No rushing or roaring, but a devoted attachment, expressed by a sort of dignified reverence, which seemed divided betwixt a high veneration for their sovereign and a suitable regard for themselves. I have seen in my day many a levee and drawing-room, but none so august and free from absurdity and ridicule as those of Holyrood. The apartments also, desolate and stripped as they have been, are worth a hundred of Carlton or Buckingham House; but the singular and native good-breeding of the people, who never saw a court, is the most remarkable of all. The populace without, shew the same propriety as the gentles within. The people that our carriages passed amongst to-day were all full of feeling, and it was remarkable that, instead of huzzaing, they shewed the singular compliment of lifting up their children to see them—the most affecting thing you ever witnessed. When Saunders goes wrong, it must be from malice prepense; for no one knows so well how to do right. Mamma (Lady Scott), Sophia, and Anne were dreadfully frightened, and I, of course, though an old courtier, in such a court as Holyrood, was a good deal uneasy. The king, however, spoke to them, and they were all kissed in due form, though they protest they are still at a loss how the ceremony was performed. The king leaves on Wednesday, to my great joy, for strong emotions cannot last. He has lived entirely within doors. To-morrow, I suppose, there is a dinner-party at Dalkeith, as I am commanded there, but it is the first. I have had, from over-exertion and distress of mind, a strong cutaneous eruption in my legs and arms. You would think I had adopted the national musical instrument to regale his Majesty; but, seriously, I believe I should have been ill but for the relief Nature has been pleased to afford me in this ungainly way. Fortunately, my hands and face are clear.

W. S.’

And Laidlaw, writing to a friend, gives some further particulars:

‘Sir Walter was very full of the king for a while, but we went up Ettrick, and I have seen but little of him since. He had serious work with the English noblemen in the king’s train, who did not seem to wish that Scotland should shew off as an independent kingdom, which, by the articles of the Union, was provided for in the event of the king’s coming to Edinburgh. They wanted all to be done according to English form, as was the case in Ireland, but he settled them. They proposed, too, that the Highland guard (indeed they objected to the guard altogether) should have the flints taken from their pistols! A deputy, Colonel Stevenson, had the management, and corresponded with Sir Walter; and as he was to dine at Castle Street with a number of the Highland chiefs, Sir Walter proposed that the colonel should speak to them on the subject. After they were a little warmed with wine, Sir Walter addressed Stevenson, who sat beside him, saying he had better now propose what he had mentioned before. The Highlanders had got to telling old stories, and were in high spirits; they were, of course, in full dress. Colonel Stevenson said he saw now that he had mistaken the sort of people beside him; and on Sir Walter pressing him (rather slyly) to proceed, he declared he would rather not.

‘The king was greatly surprised and affected with the behaviour of the people on Sunday. They did not cheer as usual, but took off their hats and bowed as they passed along. He expressed himself strongly to Sir Walter about this. Sir Walter said the verses of the cavalier to his mistress might be applied to the people:

“Yet this inconstancy is such

As you too shall adore;

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not honour more.”

I found the lines were by Lovelace, addressed to his Lucasta, on his going to the wars. The king witnessed an incident that seemed, as Sir Walter said, to have made a deep impression on his mind. As he came along the Calton Hill road, the crowd made a rush down hill towards the royal carriage, and the king saw a child fall. Had it been in London, he said, the child would have been trampled to death, and he expected nothing else. But in a moment there was a loud cry of “Stop!” and five or six men linked themselves together arm-in-arm, and set themselves to keep off the crowd, standing like an arch; then a man stepped before them and lifted the boy, and held him up above the crowd, to shew that he was not hurt. Sir Walter heard the king relate this incident twice.’

In the autumn of 1825, Sir Walter visited Ireland, and thus, in homely confidential style, records his impressions:

‘My dear Willie—I conclude you are now returned, with wife and bairns, to Kaeside, and not the worse of your tour. I have been the better of mine; and Killarney being the extreme point, I am just about to commence my return to Dublin, where I only intend to remain two or three days at farthest. I should like to find a line from you, addressed “Care of David Macculloch, Esq., Cheltenham,” letting me know how matters go on at Abbotsford—if you want money (as I suppose you do), and so forth.

‘I have every reason to make a good report of Ireland, having been received with distinction, which is flattering, and with warm-hearted kindness, which is much better. I am happy to say the country is rapidly improving every year, which argues the spirit that is afloat, and indicates that British capital is finding its way into a country where it can be employed to advantage. The idea of security is gaining ground even in those districts which are, or rather were, the most unsettled, and plenty has brought her usual companion content, in her hand. But the public peace is secured chiefly by large bodies of armed police, called by the civil term of constables, but very unlike the Dogberries of England, being, in fact, soldiers on foot and horse, well armed and mounted, and dressed exactly like our yeomen. It is not pleasant to see this, but it is absolutely necessary for some time at least; and from all I can hear, the men are under strict discipline, and behave well. They are commanded by the magistracy, and are very alert.

‘The soil is in most places extremely rich, but cultivation is not as yet well understood. That accursed system of making peats interferes with everything; and I have passed through whole counties where a very noble harvest, ripe for the sickle, was waiting for the next shower of rain; while all the population who should cut were up to the midst in bogs. Not a single field of turnips have I seen, owing probably to the same reason.

‘The political disputes are of far less consequence here than we think in Britain; but, on the whole, it would be highly desirable that the Catholic Bill should pass. It would satisfy most of the higher classes of that persuasion, who seem much inclined to form a sort of Low Church, differing in ceremonies more than in essential points from that of the English Church. I mean they would do this tacitly and gradually. The lower class will probably continue for a long time bigoted Papists; but education becoming general, it is to be supposed that popery, in its violent tenets, will decline even amongst them. By the way, education is already far more general than in England. I saw in the same village four hundred Catholic children attending school, and about two hundred Protestants attending another. The peculiar doctrines of neither church were permitted to be taught; and there were Protestants amongst the Papist children, and Papists among the Protestant.

‘The general condition of the peasantry requires much improvement. Their cabins are wretched, and their dress such a labyrinth of rags, that I have often feared some button would give way, and shame us all. But this is mending, and the younger people are all more decently dressed, and the new huts which are arising are greatly better than the old pigsties. In short, all is on the move and the mend. But as I must be on the move myself, I must defer the rest of my discoveries till we meet. We have in our party, Anne, Lockhart, Walter and his wife, and two Miss Edgeworths, so we are a jolly party. Will you shew this to Lady Scott? I wrote to her two days since.—Always truly yours,

Walter Scott.

‘Killarney, 8th August.’

The brilliance of Abbotsford had now reached its culminating point. The commercial crisis of 1825–26 was close at hand, and the first note of the alarm and confusion in the money-market suspended all improvements, and occasioned intense anxiety to Sir Walter. We add two letters as supplementing Lockhart’s narrative:

‘My dear William—The money-market in London is in a tremendous state, so much so that, whatever good reason I have, and I have the best, for knowing that Constable and his allies, Hurst and Robinson, are in perfect force, yet I hold it wise and necessary to prepare myself for making good my engagements, which come back on me suddenly, or by taking up those which I hold good security for. For this purpose I have resolved to exercise my reserved faculty to burden Abbotsford with £8000 or £10,000. I can easily get the money, and having no other debts, and these well secured, I hold it better to “put money in my purse,” and be a debtor on my land for a year or two, till the credit of the public is restored. I may not want the money, in which case I will buy into the funds, and make some cash by it. But I think it would be most necessary, and even improper not to be fully prepared.

‘What I want of you is to give me a copy of the rental of Abbotsford, as it now stands, mentioning the actual rents of ground let, and the probable rents of those in my hand. You gave me one last year, but I would rather have the actual rents, and as such business is express, I would have you send it immediately, and keep it all as much within as you think fair and prudent. Your letter need only contain the rental, and you may write your remarks separately. I have not the slightest idea of losing a penny, but the distrust is so great in London that the best houses refuse the best bills of the best tradesmen, and as I have retained such a sum in view of protecting my literary commerce, I think it better to make use of it, and keep my own mind easy, than to carry about bills to unwilling banks, and beg for funds which I can use of my own. I have more than £10,000 to receive before Midsummer, but then I might be put to vexation before that, which I am determined to prevent.

‘By all I can learn, this is just such an embarrassment as may arise when pickpockets cry “Fire!” in a crowd, and honest men get trampled to death. Thank God, I can clear myself of the mêlée, and am not afraid of the slightest injury. If the money horizon does not clear up in a month or two, I will abridge my farming, &c. I cannot find there is any real cause for this; but an imaginary one will do equal mischief. I need not say this is confidential.—Yours truly,

Walter Scott.

‘16th December [1825], Edinburgh.’

‘The confusion of 1814 is a joke to this. I have no debts of my own. On the contrary, £3000 and more lying out on interest, &c. It is a little hard that, making about £7000 a year, and working hard for it, I should have this botheration. But it arises out of the nature of the same connection which gives, and has given me, a fortune, and therefore I am not entitled to grumble.’

[Edinburgh, January 26, 1826.]

‘My dear Willie—I wrote to you some days since, but from yours by the carrier I see my letter has not reached you. It does not much signify, as it was not, and could not be, of any great consequence until I see how these untoward matters are to turn up. Of course, everything will depend on the way the friends of the great house in London, and those of Constable here, shall turn out. Were they to be ultimately good, or near it, this would pass over my head with little inconvenience. But I think it better to take the worst point of view, and suppose that I do not receive from them above five shillings in the pound; and even in that case, I am able to make a proposal to my creditors, that if they allow me to put my affairs into the hands of a private trustee, or trustees, and finish the literary engagements I have on hand, there is no great chance of their being ultimate losers. This is the course I should choose. But if they wish rather to do what they can for themselves, they will, in that case, give me a great deal of pain, and make a great deal less of the funds. For, it is needless to say, that no security can make a man write books, and upon my doing so—I mean completing those in hand—depends the instant payment of a large sum. I have no reason to apprehend that any of the parties concerned are blind to their interest in this matter. I have had messages from all the banks, &c., offering what assistance they could give, so that I think my offer will be accepted. Indeed, as they cannot sell Abbotsford, owing to its being settled in Walter’s marriage contract, there can be little doubt they will adopt the only way which promises, with a little time, to give them full payment, and my life may, in the meanwhile, be insured. My present occupations completed, will enable me to lay down, in the course of the summer, at least £20,000 of good cash, which, if things had remained sound among the booksellers, would have put me on velvet.

‘The probable result being that we must be accommodated with the delay necessary, our plan is to sell the house and furniture in Castle Street, and Lady S. and Anne to come to Abbotsford, with a view of economising, while I take lodgings in Edinburgh, and work hard till the Session permits me to come out. All our farming operations must, of course, be stopped so soon as they can with least possible loss, and stock, &c., disposed of. In short, everything must be done to avoid outlay. At the same time, there can be no want of comfort. I must keep Peter and the horses for Lady Scott’s sake, though I make sacrifices in my own [case]. Bogie, I think, we will also keep, but we must sell the produce of the garden. As for Tom, he and I go to the grave together. All idle horses, &c., must be dispensed with.

‘For you, my dear friend, we must part—that is, as laird and factor—and it rejoices me to think that your patience and endurance, which set me so good an example, are like to bring round better days. You never flattered my prosperity, and in my adversity it is not the least painful consideration that I cannot any longer be useful to you. But Kaeside, I hope, will still be your residence; and I will have the advantage of your company and advice, and probably your services as amanuensis. Observe, I am not in indigence, though no longer in affluence; and if I am to exert myself in the common behalf, I must have honourable and easy means of life, although it will be my inclination to observe the most strict privacy, both to save expense and also time; nor do we propose to see any one but yourself and the Fergusons.

‘I will be obliged to you to think over all these matters; also whether anything could be done in leasing the saw-mill, or Swanston working it for the public. I should like to keep him if I could. I imagine they must leave me my official income, which, indeed, is not liable to be attached. That will be £1600 a year, but there is Charles’s college expenses come to £300 at least. I can add, however, £200 or £300 without interrupting serious work. Three or four years of my favour with the public, if my health and life permit, will make me better off than ever I have been in my life. I hope it will not inconvenience the Miss Smiths to be out of their money for a little while. It is a most unexpected chance on my part.

‘All that I have said is for your consideration and making up your mind, for nothing can be certain till we hear what the persons principally concerned please to say. But then, if they accede to the trust, we will expect to have the pleasure of seeing you here with a list of stock and a scheme of what you think best to be done. My purpose is that everything shall be paid ready money from week to week.

‘I have £180 to send to you, and it is in my hands. Of course it will be paid, but I am unwilling to send it until I know the exact footing on which I am to stand. The gentleman whom I wish should be my trustee—or one of them—is John Gibson, the Duke’s factor.

‘Lady Scott’s spirits were affected at first, but she is getting better. For myself, I feel like the Eildon Hills—quite firm, though a little cloudy. I do not dislike the path which lies before me. I have seen all that society can shew, and enjoyed all that wealth can give me, and I am satisfied much is vanity, if not vexation of spirit. I am arranging my affairs, and mean to economise a good deal, and I will pay every man his due.—Yours truly,

Walter Scott.’

There was some delusion in all this. Sir Walter never fully comprehended the state of his pecuniary affairs. It was one of his weaknesses, as James Ballantyne has said, to shrink too much from looking evil in the face, and he was apt to carry a great deal too far ‘sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.’ Laidlaw mentions another small weakness: ‘he was always in alarm lest the servants should suspect he was in want of money.’ This, of course, was subsequent to the public declaration of the failure. Laidlaw went to Edinburgh to report to the trustees with respect to the best way of closing the farm business, and there met Sir Walter.

‘He bears himself wonderfully. Miss Scott does not seem to be quite aware or sensible of anything but that they are to reside in retirement at Abbotsford. Lady Scott is rather unwilling to believe it, and does not see the necessity of such complete retrenchment as Sir Walter tells her is absolutely necessary. I have dined three times there, and there is not much difference in their manner. Sir W. is often merry, and so are they all, but still oftener silent. I think that if they were a week or two at Abbotsford they would be more happy than they have been for many a day. I am sure this would be the case with Sir Walter, for the weight of such an immense system of bills sent for his signature every now and then would be off his mind. I heard to-day that the Duke of Somerset and another English nobleman have written to Sir Walter, offering him £30,000 each, which he has firmly refused; and it is reported that the young Duke of Buccleuch has written him, offering to take the whole loss on himself, and to pay the interest of Sir Walter’s debt until he comes of age. If that is true, Sir Walter should accept the offer for the Duke’s own sake—for the glorious moral effect it would have upon the truly noble young fellow. But, apart from all this, cannot they set up Constable again? He has likewise been a real benefactor to his country, and then Sir Walter would, of course, be relieved.’

The private grief of Scott was for a short time merged in what he considered an important public cause. The Liverpool Administration at this time proposed to change the Scotch system of currency, abolishing the small bank-notes, and assimilating the monetary system of Scotland to that of England. This project was assailed by the wit, humour, sound sense, and nationality of Scott, in a series of letters signed ‘Malachi Malagrowther,’ and the letters of Malachi were as successful as those of Swift’s ‘M. B. Drapier’ concerning the currency of Ireland. The English government, in both cases, was compelled to abandon the denationalising scheme. Scott writes to Laidlaw, March 1, 1826:

‘I enclose a couple of copies of a pamphlet on the currency, which may amuse you. The other copy is for Mr Craig, Galashiels. I have got off some bile from my stomach which has been disturbing me for some years. The Scotch have a fair opportunity now to give battle, if they dare avail themselves of it. One would think I had little to do, that I should go loose upon politics.’

He had, in fact, entered upon his herculean task of paying off some £120,000 of debt by his pen! The Life of Napoleon was commenced, and in the autumn the biographer set off for London and Paris to consult state-papers and gather information. He succeeded well in his errand. ‘My collection of information,’ he writes, ‘goes on faster than I can take it in; but, then, it is so much coloured by passion and party-feeling, that it requires much scouring. I spent a day at the Royal Lodge at Windsor, which was a grand affair for John Nicholson, as he got an opportunity to see his Majesty.’ And the incident, no doubt, afforded as much gratification to the kind, indulgent master as it did to the servant.

After the Abbotsford establishment was broken up, Laidlaw was some time engaged in cataloguing the large library of Scott of Harden, and at times visiting his brothers, sheep-farmers in Ross-shire. The following description of a scene he witnessed, a Highland Summer Sacrament out of doors, evinces no mean powers of observation and description:

‘The people here gather in thousands to the sacraments, as they did in Ettrick in Boston’s time. We set out on Sunday to the communion at Ferrintosh, near Dingwall, to which the people resort from fifty miles’ distance. Macdonald, the minister who attracts this concourse of persons, was the son of a piper in Caithness (but from the Celtic population of the mountains there). He preached the sermon in the church in English, with a command of language and a justness of tone, action, and reasoning—keeping close to the pure metaphysics of Calvin—that I have seldom, if ever, heard surpassed. He had great energy on all points, but it never touched on extravagance. The Highland congregation sat in a cleugh, or dell, of a long, hollow, oval shape, bordered with hazel and birch and wild roses. It seemed to be formed for the purpose. We walked round the outside of the congregated thousands, and looked down on the glen from the upper end, and the scene was really indescribable. Two-thirds of those present were women, dressed mostly in large, high, wide muslin caps, the back part standing up like the head of a paper kite, and ornamented with ribbons. They had wrapped round them bright-coloured plaid shawls, the predominant hue being scarlet.

‘It was a warm, breezy day, one of the most glorious in June. The place will be about half a mile from the Frith on the south side, and at an elevation of five hundred feet. Dingwall was just opposite at the foot of Ben Wyvis, still spotted with wreaths of snow. Over the town, with its modern castle, its church, and Lombardy poplars, we saw up the richly cultivated valley of Strathpeffer. The tufted rocks and woods of Brahan (Mackenzie of Seaforth) were a few miles to the south, and fields of wheat and potatoes, separated with hedgerows of trees, intervened. Further off, the high-peaked mountains that divide the county of Inverness from Ross-shire towered in the distance. I never saw such a scene. We sat down on the brae among the people, the long white communion tables being conspicuous at the bottom. The congregation began singing the psalm to one of the plaintive, wild old tunes that I am told are only sung in the Gaelic service. The people all sing, but in such an extended multitude they could not sing all together. They chanted, as it were, in masses or large groups. I can compare the singing to nothing earthly, except it be imagining what would be the effect of a gigantic and tremendous Æolian harp with hundreds of strings! There was no resisting the impression. After coming a little to myself, I went and paced the length and breadth of the amphitheatre, taking averages, and carefully noting, as well as I could, how the people were sitting together, and I could not, in this way, make them less than 9500, besides those in the church, amounting perhaps to 1500. Most of the gentlemen of the neighbourhood, with their families, were there. I enjoyed the scene as something perfect in its way, and of rare beauty and excellence—like Melrose Abbey under a fine light, or the back of old Edinburgh during an illumination, or the Loch of the Lowes in a fine calm July evening, five minutes after sunset!’

The following brief and pleasant note, without date, must be referred to 1827, as it was in June of that year that the Life of Napoleon was published:

‘My dear Mr Laidlaw—I would be happy if you would come down at kail-time to-day. Napoleon (6000 copies) is sold for £11,000.—Yours truly,

W. S.

‘Sunday.’

Mr Gibson, W.S., in his Reminiscences of Sir Walter Scott (1871), says of the transactions of this period: ‘Of Woodstock, 9850 copies were sold for £9500; and of the Life of Napoleon, 8000 copies were sold for £18,200, and these sums, with some other funds realised, were speedily divided amongst the creditors.’ Under the date of August 1827, Sir Walter writes in the following affectionate strain:

‘Your leaving Kaeside makes a most melancholy blank to us. You, Mrs Laidlaw, and the bairns, were objects we met with so much pleasure, that it is painful to think of strangers being there. But they do not deserve good weather who cannot endure the bad, and so I would “set a stout heart to a stey” [steep] “brae;” yet I think the loss of our walks, plans, discussions, and debates, does not make the least privation that I experience from the loss of world’s gear. But, sursum corda, and we shall have many happy days yet, and spend some of them together. I expect Walter and Jane, and then our long-separated family will be all together in peace and happiness. I hope Mrs Laidlaw and you will come down and spend a few days with us, and revisit your old haunts. I miss you terribly at this moment, being engaged in writing a planting article for the Quarterly, and not having patience to make some necessary calculations.’

Mr Laidlaw has written on the back of the communication: ‘This letter lies in the drawer in which the unfinished manuscript of Waverley was found, amongst fishing-tackle, &c. which yet remain. I got the desk as a present from Sir Walter.’

The death, in the autumn of 1829, of faithful Tom Purdie—forester, henchman, and humble friend—was a heavy blow to Sir Walter, then fast sinking in vigour and alacrity. The proverbial difficulty of obtaining a precisely exact account of any contemporary event, even from parties most closely connected with it, is illustrated in this case. Lockhart reports the death as follows:

‘Thomas Purdie leaned his head one evening on the table, and dropped asleep. This was nothing uncommon in a hard-working man; and his family went and came about him for several hours, without taking any notice. When supper came, they tried to awaken him, and found that life had been for some time extinct.’

Scott’s account is different:

‘My dear Willie—I write to tell you the shocking news of poor Tom Purdie’s death, by which I have been greatly affected. He had complained, or rather spoken, of a sore throat; and the day before yesterday, as it came on a shower of rain, I wanted him to walk fast on to Abbotsford before me, but you know well how impossible that was. He took some jelly, or trifle of that kind, but made no complaint. This morning he rose from bed as usual, and sat down by the table with his head on his hand; and when his daughter spoke to him, life had passed away without a sigh or groan. Poor fellow! There is a heart cold that loved me well, and, I am sure, thought of my interest more than his own. I have seldom been so much shocked. I wish you would take a ride down and pass the night. There is much I have to say, and this loss adds to my wish to see you. We dine at four. The day is indifferent, but the sooner the better.—Yours very truly,

Walter Scott.

‘Abbotsford, 31st October.’

A few days afterwards (November 5), Laidlaw thus relates the story:

‘Tom Purdie, poor fellow! died on Friday night or Saturday morning. He had fallen asleep with his head on his hands resting on the table, his usual practice. Margaret and Mary’ [his wife and daughter] ‘left him to go to bed when he should awaken; and Margaret found him exactly in the same situation when she rose, but dead, cold, and stiff. Sir Walter wrote to me, in great distress, to come down. I did so on Sunday, and on Tuesday I went to poor Tom’s funeral. Sir Walter had my pony put in again, and made me stay all day. He was in very great distress about Tom, and will miss him continually, and in many ways that come nearest to him. Sir Walter wants us to return to Kaeside at Whitsunday. Kindness of heart is positively the reigning quality of Sir Walter’s character!’

A noble eulogium, and pronounced by one better qualified, perhaps, than any of his contemporaries, to form the opinion so expressed. Of the greatest author of his age it might truly be said:

‘His highest honours to the heart belong.’

William Laidlaw did return to Kaeside. At Whitsuntide 1830, he dropped anchor safely at his old roadstead, which had been suitably prepared for his reception. But before doing so, we find him putting in a kind word for the Ettrick Shepherd, who was in difficulties. In March 1830, Laidlaw wrote to Sir Walter:

‘I had your letter from Bowhill, and was much gratified to learn that you and Miss Scott had passed so much time with the duke and duchess. I have no doubt that His Grace would bring our friend the Shepherd and his concerns before you, and I am anxious to know if it is the duke’s intention to render him a little more comfortable at Altrive. You know that Hogg built the cottage there, at his own expense (with an allowance of wood, perhaps), and he likewise built a considerable addition to Mount Benger, and a barn—all which cost him a great sum of money, quite disproportionate to a holding of £7 a year, even at a nominal rent. The cottage was intended for a bachelor’s abode, and is very inadequate to what is now required by the bard’s family; and I see that if His Grace does not think of giving him some allowance as an addition, it will most likely banish him from the district with which his poetry and feeling are so closely associated. I mention all this because I have observed that there is a prejudice against him among the sub-agents since Christie left the service, or rather, since the late duke’s death. One of them said to me, when I mentioned Hogg’s genius and amiable character, Cui bono? I, too, say, Cui bono? What is the use of all his poetry, and the rest? Now, from R.’s usage of him, there is every reason to suspect that he is a cui bono man too, and Hogg stands a bad chance among them, and I believe the duke knows nothing about the truth of the matter.’

Nothing was done. ‘As to the success of an application to the duke,’ writes Scott, ‘I am doubtful. The duke seemed to have made up his mind on the subject, and I saw no chance of being of service.’ Literature and the journey to London did something for the Shepherd. He wrote and struggled on at Altrive till November 1835, when the ‘world’s poor strife’ was over, and he sank to rest.

Among the dearest and most valued of all the visitors at Abbotsford were the Fergusons of Huntly Burn. Here is a kindly note sent to Kaeside:

‘Miss Ferrier is to be at Abbotsford this day, being Tuesday, 20th October’ [1829], ‘and Mr Wilkie is to be there on Thursday; so, if you come, you will have painting, poetry, history, and music—as Miss Wilkie is a musician. In short, all the Muses will be there. If this does not tempt you, I don’t know what will.—Yours truly,

Isabella Ferguson.’

Ill-health and political agitation brought darker days to Abbotsford. The Reform Bill was Sir Walter’s bête noire. The neighbouring Tory lairds, proud of his co-operation, induced him to join in their local movement against the bill, and this still further aggravated his morbid feeling. In March 1831, he was present at a meeting of the freeholders of Roxburgh, held at Jedburgh, to pass resolutions against the Reform Bill. He was dragged to the meeting by the young Duke of Buccleuch and Mr Henry Scott of Harden, contrary to his prior resolution, and his promise to Miss Scott; for his health was then much shattered. ‘He made a confused imaginative speech,’ says Laidlaw, ‘which was full of evil forebodings and mistaken views. The people who were auditors, in proportion to their love and reverence for him, felt disappointed and sore, and, like himself, were carried away by their temporary chagrin, to the great regret of the country around.’ At the election in Jedburgh, Sir Walter was hooted at, and hissed, and saluted with cries of ‘Burke Sir Walter!’ Laidlaw adds: ‘The same people, a few weeks afterwards, when Mr Oliver, the sheriff of Roxburgh, was foolishly swearing in constables at Melrose, said boldly they need not bring them to fight against reform, for they would fight for it; but if any one meddled with Sir Walter Scott, they would fight for him.’ Amidst all the excitement of politics, and in sinking health, Sir Walter continued to write, or rather to dictate, and worked steadily at his novel of Count Robert of Paris.

‘I am now writing as amanuensis for Sir Walter,’ said Laidlaw; ‘and have the satisfaction of finding that I am of essential service to him, as he was attacked with chilblains on his hands to such a degree as to unfit him for writing long unless with great pain. We go on with almost as great spirit as when he dictated Ivanhoe. He has become a good deal lamer, which prevents him from taking his usual walks; and he gets upon a pony with great difficulty. But of late he has been in excellent spirits. His memory seems to be as good as ever; at least, it is far beyond that of other people. I come down at seven o’clock, and write until nine; we are at it again before ten, and continue until one. He is impatient and miserable when not employed.’

About this time—the spring of 1831—Joanna Baillie published a thin volume of selections from the New Testament ‘regarding the nature and dignity of Jesus Christ.’ The tendency of the work was Socinian, or at least Arian; and Scott was indignant that his friend should have meddled with such a subject. ‘What had she to do with questions of that sort?’ He refused to add the book to his library, and gave it to Laidlaw. One day Sir Walter was loud in praise of one of the workmen engaged at Abbotsford, a native of the neighbouring village of Darnick. ‘Yes,’ added Laidlaw; ‘and do you know, Sir Walter, he is an excellent Burgher preacher.’[11] ‘A preacher, d—n him!’ exclaimed Scott jocularly, and wheeling round as if to whistle the Burgher preacher down the wind.

In a very manly and interesting letter, addressed to Lockhart (of which he had kept a copy), Laidlaw enters into further particulars concerning the studies at Abbotsford:

‘Sir Walter is very greatly better. He has given up smoking, and takes porridge to his supper instead of the long and hearty pull of brown stout. He is full of jokes and glee. Were it possible to prevail upon him to wear a greatcoat when he rides out to the hills in a north-west wind, and to take champagne and water instead of a monstrous tumbler of strong ale after tea, I am positive—and so are the regular medical people—that he would get right again. He drinks no wine, and has been advised to take gin-toddy instead of whisky. He has given up the regular dram out of a quaich, but takes a sly taste of the excellent hollands before he coups it into the tumbler, thereby satisfying his conscience, no doubt, by reducing it to the half-glass which, it seems, is the Abercromby law as to strong liquors. Don’t you mind the style of his letters; that is all, or nearly all, humbug. What he dictates of Robert of Paris is, much of it, as good as anything he ever wrote. He does not go on so fast; but I do not see that he is much more apt to make blunders—that is, to let his imagination get ahead of his speech—than when he wrote Ivanhoe. The worst business was that accursed nonsensical petition in the name of the magistrates, justices of the peace, and freeholders of the extensive, influential, and populous county of Selkirk! We were more than three days at it. At the beginning of the third day, he walked backwards and forwards, enunciating the half-sentences with a deep and awful voice, his eyebrows seemingly more shaggy than ever, and his eyes more fierce and glaring—altogether, like the royal beast in his cage! It suddenly came over me, as politics was always Sir Walter’s weak point, that he was crazy, and that I should have to come down to Abbotsford, and write on and away at the petition until the crack of doom! I was seized at the same moment with an inclination, almost uncontrollable, to burst into laughter. But seriously, you know, as well as anybody, his great excitability on political matters; and I must say it surprised me not a little that a person of your sagacity and acuteness should have thought of writing him upon politics at all, the more, because I believe that if a magpie were to come and chatter politics, or even that body, Lord M., he would believe all they said, if they spoke of change, and danger, and rumours of war—belli servilis more than all. (May I speak and live!) I felt inclined to doubt whether you had not gane gyte’ [gone crazy] ‘yourself! Could you not have sent him literary chit-chat and amusing anecdotes from London, which would have been the very thing for him, as it was of great consequence that his mind should be kept calm and cheerful?’

Mental disease and physical infirmity continued to increase, and a winter at Naples, with complete abstinence from literary labour, was prescribed. Wordsworth prayed for favouring gales:

‘Be true,

Ye winds of ocean, and the midland sea,

Wafting your charge to soft Parthenope!’

Alas! it was all in vain. Before quitting the country, Sir Walter gave Laidlaw a mandate, or letter of authority, to represent him at county meetings, and a paper of directions as to keeping the house, the books, and garden in order. Two items are worth quoting as characteristic:

‘The dogs to be taken care of, especially to shut them up separately when there is anything to quarrel about.

‘When Mr Laidlaw thinks it will be well taken, to consult Mr Nicol Milne, and not to stop young Mr Nicol when shooting on our side of the hedge.’

Having made these arrangements, the invalid thought of taking a farewell look of Melrose Abbey. One morning Mr Laidlaw’s family were startled to see Sir Walter approaching Kaeside, feeble, and wearing his nightcap, which apparently he had forgotten to exchange for a hat. No notice was taken of the circumstance. After the usual kindly salutations, he said, with a tremulous voice, that he had come to take a last look of the abbey. He proceeded to an elevated point commanding a view of the spot, and after gazing long and anxiously down on the town and abbey, he said slowly: ‘It is a venerable ruin!’ and returned to Abbotsford.

The government, as is well known, placed a frigate at his disposal for the voyage to the Mediterranean. The reception at Portsmouth, and the arrangements on board the Barham, were highly gratifying to Sir Walter and his family. ‘The ship is magnificent,’ writes Mrs Lockhart, ‘and carries four hundred and eighty men. The rooms are excellent, and everything that could be thought of for papa’s comfort, in every way, has been done.’ Hopes of his ultimate recovery were entertained. Cadell writes, December 29, 1831: ‘I have two long letters from Sir Walter, one dated “Off Trafalgar, 14th November,” and finished at Malta on the 23d. He is in great glee, and must be much better. He has made some progress with a new novel, The Siege of Malta.’ At the date of the second letter, he had got through thirty of his own pages. Major Scott arrived from Naples on the 1st of April 1832, and brought no very flattering tidings. ‘From his talk,’ writes Lockhart, ‘and from a huge bundle of letters which he conveyed, we draw one inference—namely, that though the bodily strength of your friend has improved since he left us, there has been rather, if anything, a further dislocation and prostration of the better part. Cadell is here, and he and I and the major spent a sad enough evening over the budget.’ All hope was soon dispelled. The hurried journey home from Italy induced another attack of apoplexy. He was struck while in the steamboat on the Rhine at Cologne, and fell into Miss Scott’s arms. Nicholson bled him instantly, and restored animation. They pushed on for Rotterdam, and got there just as the London boat was setting off for England. Laidlaw writes to a friend:

‘You will see by the newspapers that Sir Walter is coming home to die, I fear, or worse. It has come to what I always feared since he told me that Mr Cadell had half the proceeds of the great new edition. Sir Walter’s permanent income is, as you know, reduced salary, £840; sheriffdom, £300—total, £1140. No person can live at Abbotsford, and keep it up, in a country-gentlemanly way, under £2000 a year, for it will take nearly £1200 for servants, taxes, coals, garden, horses, &c. The run of strangers was immense. Sir Walter wrote for Keepsakes, Reviews, &c., and kept things going; but of late this stream dried up, and he has been confused in his notions of money matters. He is much involved, and will not be able to draw any more than his salaries. He has all this winter taken it into his head that his debts are paid off, and this was from catching at an idea of Cadell’s of borrowing money and paying the creditors all except the interest. He will know the truth when he comes to London, and this, with the winter and cold weather, will kill him. How can a man with his sensibility, used for thirty years to the strongest excitement, and living on popular applause, in luxury, glitter, and show, survive when all is gone, and nothing but ruin, coldness, and darkness remain?’

Deprived of the use of his right arm and side, weak and depressed, Sir Walter reached London on the evening of the 13th of June 1832. Five days later, Cadell writes: ‘Our poor friend is still alive, but very ill. He took leave of his children to-day, very clearly and distinctly. In the morning, he mistook Lockhart for me; and it was some time before he could be put right. The doctors doubt his getting over to-night.’ He rallied, however, and next month was conveyed to Abbotsford. Laidlaw’s account of Sir Walter’s arrival (written the day after) differs in some particulars from the narrative of Lockhart—one of the most affecting narratives in the language.

‘I was at the door when he’ [Sir Walter], ‘Mr and Mrs Lockhart, and Miss Scott arrived. They said he would not know me. He was in a sort of long carriage that opened at the back. He had an uncommon stupid look, staring straight before him; and assuredly he did not know where he was. It was very dismal. I began to feel myself agitated in spite of all my resolution. Lockhart ordered away the ladies; and two servants, in perfect silence, lifted him out, and carried him into the dining-room. I followed, of course. They had placed him in a low arm-chair, where he reclined. Mrs Lockhart made a sign for me to step forward to see if he would recognise me. She said: “Mr Laidlaw, papa.” He raised his eyes a little, and when he caught mine, he started, and exclaimed: “Good God, Mr Laidlaw! I have thought of you a thousand times!” and he held out his hand. They were all very much surprised; and it being quite unexpected, I was much affected. He was put to bed. I had gone into one of the empty rooms, and some little time after Nicholson came to tell me that Sir Walter wished to see me. He spoke a little confusedly, but inquired if the people were suffering any hardship, if they were satisfied, &c. I had written to him that I had paid off nine or ten of the men after he had gone away last year. I did not remain long.

‘I understand Sir Walter’s mind has been wandering from one dream to another; but now and then breaking through the cloud that hangs over it, and surprising his attendants with glimpses of his original intellect. Alas, alas! However, he has rested better than for some time past, and was wheeled into the library’ [July 12], ‘and seemed gratified. When I called about eleven o’clock, he was sound asleep.’

A fortnight later, Laidlaw writes:

‘Sir Walter is generally collected in the morning, and very restless and troublesome to his daughters during the afternoon and night; often raving, but always quiet, and generally shewing command of himself when Lockhart comes in. Sometimes he seemed gratified at being at home, and even once or twice made pertinent quotations, and spoke of books, &c. Until yesterday, he always knew me, and I clearly saw he had then a distressing desire to speak to me. I perceived that although he might appear to feel little pain, he was really suffering a great deal, partly from a sense of his situation and inaction, but chiefly from the overpowering cloud and weight upon his great intellect. Yesterday, he was apparently unconscious; he could not speak, but was wheeled into the library for awhile. I never witnessed a more moving or more melancholy sight. Once, when Lockhart spoke of his restlessness, he replied: “There will be rest in the grave.”’

One delusion under which the illustrious sufferer laboured was preparing Abbotsford for the reception of the Duke of Wellington. Another was, his personation of the character of a Scottish judge trying his own daughters. In the course of the latter, there were painful bursts of violence and excitement. ‘It is strange,’ said Laidlaw, ‘that he never refers to any of his works or literary plans.’ The truth is, he had thrown them off, to use an expression of his own, with ‘an effort as spontaneous as that of a tree resigning its leaves to the wind,’ and they soon passed from his memory. Besides, he had, when in health, always practised a modest reticence respecting his works, which had become habitual. The following points to the end of the struggle:

‘Poor papa still lingers, although in the most hopeless state of mind and body. For this week past, the doctor has taken leave every day, saying he could not survive the twenty-four hours; and to-day, he says the pulse is weaker and worse than ever it has been, and that his living is almost a miracle. How thankful we shall be when it pleases God he is at rest, for a more complete aberration of mind never was before; and he even now is so violent we sometimes dare not go within reach of his hand. And the miserable scenes we have witnessed before his strength was reduced as it now is! One great comfort has been, all suffering, so far as we can judge, mental or bodily, has been spared, and that for two months past he has not for an instant been aware of his situation. My brothers were sent for, and have been here for two days. When all is over, Anne and I and the children will leave this now miserable place for ever. Lockhart is obliged to go straight to London, but we mean to spend a couple of weeks with his relations in Lanarkshire, and perhaps take Rokeby in our way up. We are both much better than you would expect under such sad circumstances. Excuse this miserable scrawl; I hardly know what I write....

C. Sophia Lockhart.

‘Abbotsford, Sunday’ [September 16, 1832].[12]

On the day succeeding that on which this melancholy letter would seem to have been written, Sir Walter had a brief interval of consciousness, as described by Lockhart, although the biographer would appear to have misdated the arrival of the sons of the poet. A few more days terminated the struggle; Sir Walter died on the 21st of September. In October, Laidlaw notes that Major Scott had given him, accompanied with a most gratifying letter, the locket which Sir Walter constantly wore about his neck. This was presented to Sir Walter by Major Scott and his wife (inscribed ‘From Walter and Jane’) on the day of their marriage, and it contained some of the hair of each. Major Scott enclosed as much of Sir Walter’s hair as would supply the place of theirs, which he wished to be taken out of the locket. ‘I shall try to find room for all,’ said Mr Laidlaw; and he did find room, interlacing the various hairs, and wearing the invaluable jewel to his dying day. ‘What a change the loss of Abbotsford must be to the Fergusons and you all!’ writes Mrs Lockhart, ‘the gentle Sophia,’ as Miss Martineau describes the fair sufferer. ‘It breaks my heart when I think of the silence and desolation that now reign there. They talk of a monument! God knows papa needs no monument; he has left behind him that which won’t pass away. But if the people of Melrose do anything, I think a great cairn on one of the hills would be what he would have chosen himself.’ Let the hills themselves suffice!

‘A mightier monument command

The mountains of his native land.’[13]

After the death of his chief, Mr Laidlaw removed to the county of Ross, and was successively factor on the estates of Seaforth and Balnagown. His health failing, he went to reside with his brother, Mr James Laidlaw, sheep-farmer at Contin, also in Ross-shire, and there he died May 18, 1845. His remains were interred in the churchyard of Contin, a retired spot under the shade of Tor Achilty, one of the loftiest and most picturesque of the Ross-shire mountains, and amidst the most enchanting Highland scenery. The lord of the manor, Sir George S. Mackenzie of Coul, Bart., erected a tomb, with a marble tablet, to his memory.

Mr Laidlaw cherished with religious care all his memorials of Abbotsford, where, indeed, his heart may be said to have remained till its last pulsation. The desk in which the first manuscript of Waverley was deposited stood in his room; the works inscribed and presented by the author were carefully ranged on his shelves; the letters he had received from him were treasured up; the pens with which Ivanhoe was written were laid past, and kept as a sacred thing; but above all he valued the brooch which was round the neck of Scott when he died. That most interesting ornament Mr Laidlaw wore while a trace of sensibility remained, and it has descended to another generation—one of the most precious of the personal reliquiæ of a splendid but melancholy friendship.

* * * * *

The biographer of Scott, John Gibson Lockhart, was not a social or clubable man. He was fastidious and reserved, silent in mixed company (he heard with only one ear, and was too proud to acknowledge it), and was inveterately prone to satire, so that he earned for himself the appellation of ‘The Scorpion,’ and he was a victim to dyspepsia, which, perhaps, like charity, ought to cover a multitude of sins. His fine acute intellect and classic taste were often obscured and his better sympathies chilled by pain and languor. To a few friends, however, Lockhart at times unbosomed himself. With them his cold, sarcastic, haughty manner melted away—at least for a season—and in those genial hours he was the most confiding and delightful of companions. As shewing the better nature and higher feelings of the man, we are tempted to subjoin one of his letters to William Laidlaw, in which he speaks of the sense of duty and responsibility under which he wrote the Memoirs of Scott—a work which, with all its faults, is unquestionably the best biography since Boswell’s Life of Johnson. There is great tenderness in the following letter; and the picture which the writer draws of his happy fireside contrasts painfully with his latter years, when broken health, a desolate hearth, and feelings lacerated by paternal troubles and anxieties, might have made him join in that lamentation of the ancient British bard which he applied to the old age of Thomas Campbell:

‘God hath provided unpleasant things for me;

Dead is Morgeneu, dead is Mordav,

Dead is Morien, dead are those I love.’[14]

Few letters of Lockhart’s are so generally interesting or so valuable, biographically, as the following:

‘London, January 19, 1837.

‘My dear Laidlaw—I received yesterday your letter and a very munificent donation of ptarmigan, for both which accept my best thanks. They were both welcome as remembrancers of Scotland, of old days, and of your kindness and affection, of which last, though I am the worst of correspondents, neither I nor my wife are ever forgetful. The account you give of your situation at present is, considering how the world wags, not unsatisfactory. Would it were possible to find myself placed in something of a similar locality, and with the means of enjoying the country by day and my books at night, without the necessity of dividing most of my time between the labours of the desk—mere drudge-labours mostly—and the harassing turmoil of worldly society, for which I never had much, and now-a-days have rarely indeed any, relish! But my wife and children bind me to the bit, and I am well pleased with the fetters. Walter is now a tall and very handsome boy of near eleven years; Charlotte, a very winsome gipsy of eight—both intelligent in the extreme, and both, notwithstanding all possible spoiling, as simple, natural, and unselfish as if they had been bred on a hillside and in a family of twelve. Sophia is your old friend—fat, fair, and by-and-by to be forty, which I now am, and over, God bless the mark! but though I think I am wiser, at least more sober, neither richer nor more likely to be rich than I was in the days of Chiefswood and Kaeside—after all, our best days, I still believe.

‘Politics, over which we used sometimes to dispute, I have quite forsworn. I have satisfied myself that the age of Toryism is by for ever; and the business of a party which can in reason propose to itself nothing but a defensive attitude, without hope either of plunder or honour, seems to me to have few claims on those who, when it was in power, never were permitted to share any of the advantages it so lavishly bestowed on fools and knaves. So I am a very tranquil and indifferent observer.

‘Perhaps, however, much of this equanimity as to passing affairs has arisen from the call which has been made on me to live in the past, bestowing for so many months all the time I could command, and all the care I have had really any heart in, upon the manuscript remains of our dear friend. I am glad that Cadell and the few others who have seen what I have done with these are pleased, but I assure you none of them can think more lightly of my own part in the matter than I do myself. My sole object is to do him justice, or rather to let him do himself justice, by so contriving it that he shall be as far as possible, from first to last, his own historiographer; and I have therefore willingly expended the time that would have sufficed for writing a dozen books on what will be no more than the compilation of one. A stern sense of duty—that kind of sense of it which is combined with the feeling of his actual presence in a serene state of elevation above all terrestrial and temporary views—will induce me to touch the few darker points in his life and character as freely as the others which were so predominant; and my chief anxiety on the appearance of the book will be, not to hear what is said by the world, but what is thought by you and the few others who can really compare the representation as a whole with the facts of the case. I shall, therefore, desire Cadell to send you the volumes as they are printed, though long before publication, in the confidence that they will be kept sacred, while unpublished, to yourself and your own household; and if you can give me encouragement on seeing the first and second, now I think nearly out of the printer’s hands, it will be very serviceable to me in the completion of the others. I have waived all my own notions as to the manner of publication, &c., in deference to the bookseller,[15] who is still so largely our creditor, and, I am grieved to add, will probably continue to be so for many years to come.

‘Your letters of the closing period I wish you would send to me; and of these I am sure some use, and some good use, may be made, as of those addressed to myself at the same time, which all, however melancholy to compare with those of the better day, have traces of the man. Out of these confused and painful scraps I think I can contrive to put together a picture that will be highly touching of a great mind shattered, but never degraded, and always to the last noble, as his heart continued pure and warm as long as it could beat.—Ever affectionately yours,

J. G. Lockhart.’

We are tempted to add a short extract from another letter of Lockhart’s, because it mentions a pleasing incident in the life of the second Sir Walter Scott. He writes, 25th May 1843, that Major Scott and his wife enjoyed perfect health in India, and he adds: ‘He (Sir W. S.) tells me that hearing a Highland battalion was to pass about fifty miles off from his station (Bangalore), he rode that distance one day, and back the next, merely to hear the skirl of the pipes! No doubt there would be a jolly mess for his reception besides; but I could not but be pleased with the touch of the “auld man.”’

LUCY’S FLITTIN’.

‘’Twas when the wan leaf frae the birk-tree was fa’in,

And Martinmas dowie had wound up the year,

That Lucy row’d up her wee kist wi’ her a’ in ’t,

And left her auld master and neebours sae dear.

For Lucy had serv’d i’ the Glen[16] a’ the simmer;

She cam there afore the bloom cam on the pea;[17]

An orphan was she, an’ they had been gude till her;

Sure that was the thing brought the tear to her ee.

She gaed by the stable, where Jamie was stan’in’,

Right sair was his kind heart her flittin’ to see;

Fare ye weel, Lucy! quo’ Jamie, and ran in—

The gatherin’ tears trickled fast frae her ee.

As down the burn-side she gaed slow wi’ her flittin’,

Fare ye weel, Lucy! was ilka bird’s sang;

She heard the craw sayin ’t, high on the tree sittin’,

And Robin was chirpin ’t the brown leaves amang.

O what is’t that pits my puir heart in a flutter?

And what gars the tears come sae fast to my ee?

If I wasna ettled to be ony better,

Then what gars me wish ony better to be?

I ’m just like a lammie that loses its mither,

Nae mither nor frien’ the poor lammie can see;

I fear I hae tint my bit heart a’ thegither;

Nae wonder the tear fa’s sae fast frae my ee.

Wi’ the rest o’ my claes, I hae row’d up the ribbon,

The bonnie blue ribbon that Jamie gae me;

Yestreen, when he gae me ’t, and saw I was sabbin’,

I’ll never forget the wae blink o’ his ee.

Though now he said naething but Fare ye weel, Lucy!

It made me I neither could speak, hear, nor see;

He couldna say mair but just Fare ye weel, Lucy!

Yet that I will mind till the day that I dee.

The lamb likes the gowan wi’ dew when it’s droukit;

The hare likes the brake and the braird on the lea;

But Lucy likes Jamie;—she turn’d, and she lookit;

She thought the dear place she wad never mair see!’

In publishing the ballad, Hogg added the following verse, in order, as he said, to complete the story; but it will be felt, we think, that he has marred the pathetic simplicity of the original, which was complete enough as a picture of the flittin’:

‘Ah, weel may young Jamie gang dowie and cheerless,

And weel may he greet on the bank o’ the burn!

His bonnie sweet Lucy, sae gentle and peerless,

Lies cauld in her grave, and will never return.’

Lockhart has truly characterised Laidlaw’s ballad as ‘a simple and pathetic picture of a poor Ettrick maiden’s feelings in leaving a service where she had been happy,’ and he adds that it has ‘long been and must ever be a favourite with all who understand the delicacies of the Scottish dialect, and the manners of the district in which the scene is laid.’ A no less flattering or discriminating notice had been previously given by a critic in the Edinburgh Review, who, in quoting one song from the four volumes of Allan Cunningham’s Songs of Scotland, Ancient and Modern, selected Laidlaw’s ‘simple ditty’ as a ‘fair example of the lowly pathetic’ which would ‘go to the heart of many a village-bred Scotchman in remote regions and all conditions of society.’

THE END.

Edinburgh:
Printed by W. & R. Chambers.