If, as I have said in the preceding chapter, the true Scott Country comprises the United Kingdom, except Ireland, the inner circle of that country, the Sanctum Sanctorum, so to speak, must be considered as including that part of Scotland lying between the Firth of Forth and the English border; or, more strictly, the counties of Edinburgh, Peebles, Selkirk, and Roxburgh. This was Scott's home, his workshop, and his playground. From the spring of 1806 to the early winter of 1830, a period of nearly twenty-five years, he performed the duties of Clerk of the Court of Session. This required his presence in Edinburgh usually from the 12th of May to the 12th of July and from the 12th of November to the 12th of March, excepting an interval at Christmas. This meant from four to six hours' work a day for four or five days each week, extending over about six months of every year. During the sessions of the court his residence was No. 39, North Castle Street, a three-story stone dwelling-house, within sight of Edinburgh Castle.
The day after the rising of the court usually found its distinguished clerk ready to 'escape to the country.' For six years his retreat was the little thatched cottage at Lasswade, in the vale of the Esk. The next eight summers found him at Ashestiel, and after that Abbotsford was the lodestone that drew him from the city. Scott loved the wide sweep of the bare hills, especially when tinged with the purple hue of the heather. Their pure air was the tonic which had saved his life, when as a child he rolled about on the rocks of Smailholm, a companion of the sheep and lambs. Their streams gave him an opportunity to lure the salmon from their hiding-places. Their rounded summits gave him many a distant view of battle-fields, famed in the Border warfare, which filled up centuries of Scottish and English history. Their pleasant glens and thickets gave him delightful walks in the woods. Their hospitable cottages extended him a never failing welcome, and yielded up to him, from the lips of hundreds of old wives, a treasure of Scottish ballads, songs, and tales of Border chivalry. Their castles and mansions threw open their doors at his approach, rivalling the humbler dwellings in the cordiality of their greeting.
No wonder Scott loved the Border country. 'It may be partiality,' said he to Washington Irving, 'but to my eye, these grey hills and all this wild Border country have beauties peculiar to themselves. I like the very nakedness of the land; it has something bold, and stern, and solitary about it. When I have been for some time in the rich scenery about Edinburgh, which is like ornamented garden land, I begin to wish myself back again among my own honest grey hills; and if I did not see the heather at least once a year, I think I should die!'
It was while riding with Lockhart and Willie Laidlaw, along the brow of the Eildon Hills, looking down upon Melrose, one fine afternoon in July, 1823, that the suggestion came which led eventually to 'St. Ronan's Well.' 'Quentin Durward' had recently appeared and Scott, commenting upon its reception, remarked that he could probably do something better with a German subject. 'Na, na, sir,' protested Laidlaw, 'take my word for it, you are always best, like Helen MacGregor, when your foot is on your native heath; and I have often thought that if you were to write a novel, and lay the scene here in the very year you were writing it, you would exceed yourself.' 'Hame 's hame,' smilingly assented Scott, 'be it ever sae hamely. There's something in what you say, Willie.' Although Laidlaw insisted that his friend should 'stick to Melrose in July, 1823,' Scott took a little broader field and made the scene of 'St. Ronan's Well,' the valley of the Tweed.
This was the country which he had pictured in 'The Lay of the Last Minstrel,' at the very beginning of his fame. He had come back to it for a bit of the scenery of 'The Monastery' and 'The Abbot.' These, however, were romances of an earlier period. He was now for the first time to write of his own country in his own time. The tale was to depict society life, not of the wholesome and genuine kind to which Scott was personally accustomed, whether in Edinburgh or the country, but of the type he had seen at various watering-places and summer resorts which he had visited.
THE TWEED AND EILDON HILLS
'St. Ronan's Well' may be considered a true picture of this society or a caricature, according to one's own sympathies. Some of its readers have been able to find among their own 'social set,' Lady Penelope Penfeather, Sir Bingo and Lady Sinks, Mr. Winterblossom, Dr. Quackleben, and even the 'man of peace,' Captain Mungo MacTurk, and have praised or condemned the author's portraits according to their own predilections toward such personages.