The vale of the Esk is unrivaled, even in Scotland, for beauty and romantic interest. From its source to where it enters the Firth of Forth, the little river winds its way past ancient castles with their romantic legends, famed in poetry and song, and the picturesque homes of barons and lairds, poets and philosophers, forming as it goes, with rocks and cliffs, tall trees and overhanging vines, a bewildering succession of beautiful scenes.
It was to this charming valley that Walter Scott came, with his young wife, in the first year of their wedded life. A young man of imaginative and romantic temperament, though as yet unknown to fame, he found the place an inspiration and delight. A pretty little cottage, with thatched roof, and a garden commanding a beautiful view, made the home where many happy summers were spent. This was at Lasswade, a village which took its striking name from the fact—let us hope it was a fact—that here a sturdy lass was wont to wade the stream, carrying travelers on her back,—a ferry service sufficiently romantic to make up for its uncertainty.
Lockhart tells us that “it was amidst these delicious solitudes” that Walter Scott “laid the imperishable foundation of all his fame. It was here that when his warm heart was beating with young and happy love, and his whole mind and spirit were nerved by new motives for exertion—it was here that in the ripened glow of manhood he seems to have first felt something of his real strength, and poured himself out in those splendid original ballads which were at once to fix his name.”
| “Sweet are the paths, O passing sweet! By Esk’s fair streams that run, O’er airy steep through copsewood deep, Impervious to the sun. ******* Who knows not Melville’s beechy grove And Roslin’s rocky glen, Dalkeith, which all the virtues love, And classic Hawthornden?” |
| HAWTHORNDEN |
The visitor who would see “Roslin’s rocky glen” may take a coach in Edinburgh and soon reach the spot after a pleasant drive over a well-kept road. But if he would see “classic Hawthornden” in the same day, he must go there first. For the gate which separates the two opens out from Hawthornden and the traveler cannot pass in the opposite direction. We therefore took the train from Edinburgh, and after half an hour alighted at a little station, from which we walked a few hundred yards along a quiet country road, until we reached a lodge marking the entrance to a large estate. Entering here, a few steps brought us to the house of the gardener, who first conducted us to the place that interests him the most—a large and well-kept garden, full of fruits and vegetables, beautiful flowers and well-trained vines. His pride satisfied by our sincere admiration of his handiwork, our guide was ready to reveal to us the glory of Hawthornden, and conducted us to the edge of a precipice known as John Knox’s Pulpit. In front is a deep ravine of stupendous rocks partly bare and partly covered with bushes and pendent creepers. The tall trees on the border, the wooded hill in the distance, and the grand sweep of the river far below, form a scene of majestic grandeur as nearly perfect as one could wish. To the left, on the very edge of a perpendicular rock, is a strong, well-built mansion, so situated that the windows of its principal rooms command a view of the wondrous vale. On the other side of the house are the ivy-covered ruins of an older castle, dating back many centuries.
Since the middle of the sixteenth century, Hawthornden has been the home of a family of Drummonds—a famous Scottish name. William Drummond, the most distinguished of them all, whose name is inseparably associated with the place, was born in 1585. His father was a gentleman-usher at the court of King James VI, and through his association with the Scottish royalty had acquired the Hawthornden property. The boy grew up amid such surroundings, was educated at the University of Edinburgh, and traveled on the Continent for three years before settling down to his life-work, which he then thought would be the practice of law. But scarcely had he returned to Edinburgh for this purpose, when his father died, and young Drummond, at the age of twenty-four, found himself master of Hawthornden with ample means at his command. All thought of the law was abandoned forthwith. The quiet of Hawthornden and the beauty of its natural scenery fitted his temperament exactly. He had already acquired a scholar’s tastes, had read extensively, and possessed a large library in which the Latin classics predominated, though there were many books in Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Spanish, French, and English. He retired to his delightful home to live among his books, and if he found that such surroundings became a tacit invitation from the Muses to keep them company, who could wonder? “Content with my books and the use of my eyes,” he said, “I learnt even from my boyhood to live beneath my fortune; and, dwelling by myself as much as I can, I neither sigh for nor seek aught that is outside me.”
It has been said that Drummond’s three stars were Philosophy, Friendship, and Love. Some three or four years after the poet began his contented life at Hawthornden, the latter star began to shine so brightly as to eclipse the other two. In 1614 he met an attractive girl of seventeen or eighteen, the daughter of Alexander Cunningham, of Barns, a country-seat on a little stream known as the Ore, in Fifeshire, on the opposite side of the Firth of Forth. His poems began at once to reveal the extent to which the loveliness of the fair Euphame had taken possession of him:—
| “Vaunt not, fair Heavens, of your two glorious lights, Which, though most bright, yet see not when they shine, And shining cannot show their beams divine Both in one place, but part by days and nights; Earth, vaunt not of those treasures ye enshrine, Held only dear because hid from our sights, Your pure and burnished gold your diamonds fine, Snow-passing ivory that the eye delights; Nor, Seas, of those dear wares are in you found; Vaunt not rich pearl, red coral, which do stir A fond desire in fools to plunge your ground. Those all more fair are to be had in her: Pearl, ivory, coral, diamond, suns, gold, Teeth, neck, lips, heart, eyes, hair, are to behold.” |
On seeing her in a boat on the Forth he declared her perfection:—