[SIR WALTER AND MR R. CHAMBERS.
In his preface to the new edition of the Traditions of Edinburgh (1869), Mr R. Chambers gives the following account of the manner in which he became acquainted with Scott. ‘When not out of my teens, I attracted some attention from Sir Walter Scott, by writing for him and presenting him (through Mr Constable) a transcript of the songs of the Lady of the Lake, in a style of peculiar caligraphy’ [resembling small print], ‘which I practised for want of any way of attracting the notice of people superior to myself. When George IV., some months afterwards, came to Edinburgh’ [August 1822], ‘good Sir Walter remembered me, and procured for me the business of writing the address of the Royal Society of Edinburgh to His Majesty, for which I was handsomely paid. Several other learned bodies followed the example, for Sir Walter was the arbiter of everything during that frantic time, and thus I was substantially benefited by his means.
‘According to what Mr Constable told me, the great man liked me, in part, because he understood I was from Tweedside. On seeing the earlier numbers of the Traditions’ [1823] ‘he expressed astonishment as to “where a boy got all the information.” But I did not see or hear from him till the first volume had been completed. He then called upon me one day, along with Mr Lockhart. I was overwhelmed with the honour, for Sir Walter was almost an object of worship to me. I literally could not utter a word. While I stood silent, I heard him tell his companion that Charles Sharpe was a writer in the Traditions. A few days after this visit, Sir Walter sent me, along with a kind letter, a packet of manuscript, consisting of sixteen folio pages, in his usual close hand-writing, and containing all the reminiscences he could at that time summon up of old persons and things in Edinburgh. Such a treasure to me! And such a gift from the greatest literary man of the age to the humblest! Is there a literary man of the present age who would scribble as much for any humble aspirant? Nor was this the only act of liberality of Scott to me. When I was preparing a subsequent work, The Popular Rhymes of Scotland, he sent me whole sheets of his recollections, with appropriate explanations. For years thereafter, he allowed me to join him in his walks home from the Parliament House, in the course of which he freely poured into my greedy ears anything he knew regarding the subjects of my studies. His kindness and good-humour on these occasions were untiring. I have since found, from his journal, that I had met him on certain days when his heart was overladen with woe. Yet, his welcome to me was the same. After 1826, however, I saw him much less frequently than before, for I knew he grudged every moment not spent in thinking and working on the fatal tasks he had assigned to himself for the redemption of his debts.’
It was in one of their walks through the Old Town that Scott pointed out the place of his birth to my brother; also the little old school in Hamilton’s Entry, where he had received some of his rudimentary instruction. On another occasion, he shewed him the house once occupied by Dr Daniel Rutherford at the foot of Hyndford’s Close, where he had often been when a boy. It is a fine antique edifice, reputed to have been the residence of the Earl of Selkirk in 1742. Latterly, it has undergone some changes, with a new entrance from the Mint Close, and forms the residence of a Roman Catholic clergyman, in connection with a neighbouring chapel. Sir Walter communicated to Robert a curious circumstance connected with this old mansion. ‘It appears that the house immediately adjacent was not furnished with a stair wide enough to allow a coffin being carried down in decent fashion. It had, therefore, what the Scottish law calls a servitude upon Dr Rutherford’s house, conferring the perpetual liberty of bringing the deceased inmates through a passage into that house, and down its stair into the lane.’]