THE COUNTRY
OF SIR WALTER SCOTT
CHAPTER I
THE 'MAKING' OF SIR WALTER
'He was makin' himsel' a' the time, but he didna ken maybe what he was about till years had passed; at first he thought o' little, I dare say, but the queerness and the fun.'
In these expressive words, Robert Shortreed, who guided Walter Scott on the celebrated 'raids' into the Liddesdale country, correctly summarized the youth and early manhood of the future poet and novelist. Scott was thirty-four years old when the 'Lay of the Last Minstrel' appeared, and had reached the mature age of forty-three before he published the first of the Waverley Novels. But from early childhood he was busily engaged, with more or less conscious purpose, in gathering the materials for his future work.
It is the purpose of this chapter to show, by a brief survey of these preparatory years, how he acquired that intimate knowledge of human nature that enabled him to record so truthfully and with such real sympathy the thoughts and feelings, the hopes and fears, the manners of life, the dress, the conversation, and the personal peculiarities of people of every degree, from Mary, Queen of Scots, to Meg Merrilies, the Queen of the Gipsies; from the lordly Earl of Montrose down to the humblest of the Children of the Mist. It will also aim to suggest something of the method by which he learned to paint such charming pictures of ancient castles and ruined abbeys, of princes' palaces and fishermen's cottages, of rocky shores and wild paths through the woods, of rivers, lakes, and mountains, and all the other elements that make up the varied and beautiful scenery of Scotland and England.
In the hilly country south of Edinburgh, standing alone on a high rock, is an old feudal tower called Smailholm. Outlined against the western sky, in the glow of a summer sunset, it seemed to us like a proud and beautiful capital letter 'I,' saying with some emphasis on the personal pronoun, 'I am a thing of some importance.' We forgave the egotism, for the old tower really is important, marking the very beginning of Walter Scott's career, the spot where he received his first poetic impulse. Here at the age of three years, he rolled about on the rocks with the sheep and lambs as if he were one of them. He had been brought to Sandy Knowe, the home of his grandfather, in an effort to save his life, for he had been a sickly child, and six brothers and sisters had died in infancy, so that his parents were naturally more than anxious. The life out of doors soon brought a marked improvement, and except for the lameness, which never left him, the boy became healthy and vigorous. He was attended by an old shepherd, known as the 'cow-bailie,' who had a great fund of Border stories, to which the lad listened eagerly.
SMAILHOLM
A devoted aunt, Miss Janet Scott, who lived at the farm, often read to him stories of Bible heroes and of the great men of Scottish history. From a few volumes of miscellaneous poetry which the family chanced to own, she read some Scottish ballads which quickly seized upon his childish fancy. He was especially fond of historical tales, and under the shadow of the old tower he used to marshal the armies of Scotland and England, fighting their battles with mimic forces of pebbles and shells, and always ending the conflict with the complete rout of the English and the triumph of the Scottish arms. One day he was missed during a violent thunderstorm, and the household set out in search of him. He was found lying on his back on the rocks, kicking his heels in the air and clapping his hands with delight as he watched the vivid lightning; and as one flash followed another, each more brilliant than the one before, he would shout, 'Bonnie! Bonnie!! Dae it again! Dae it again!' I like to think of this scene as symbolic; as a prophecy of the time, soon to come, when the lad, grown to manhood, would be sending out flash after flash of his genius while the whole world looked on in delight, shouting, 'Bonnie! Bonnie!! Dae it again! Dae it again!'