Footnote 65: Lady Montagu was the daughter of the late Lord Douglas by his first marriage with Lady Lucy Graham, daughter of the second Duke of Montrose.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 66: Lord Montagu's house at Ditton Park, near Windsor, had recently been destroyed by fire—and the ruins revealed some niches with antique candlesticks, etc., belonging to a domestic chapel that had been converted to other purposes from the time, I believe, of Henry VIII.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 67: Mr. Atkinson, of St. John's Wood, was the architect of Lord Montagu's new mansion at Ditton, as well as the artist ultimately employed in arranging Scott's interior at Abbotsford.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 68: Shakespeare's Poems—Venus and Adonis.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 69: [A misprint of some earlier date, possibly the 16th. See the more detailed account of Scott's movements at this time, to be found in Familiar Letters, vol. i. pp. 432-436.][Back to Main Text]
Footnote 70: On completing this purchase, Scott writes to John Ballantyne:—"Dear John,—I have closed with Usher for his beautiful patrimony, which makes me a great laird. I am afraid the people will take me up for coining. Indeed, these novels, while their attractions last, are something like it. I am very glad of your good prospects. Still I cry, Prudence! Prudence!—Yours truly,
W. S."[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 71: [On August 1, 1817, Jeffrey writes to Scott, asking if he could not be induced to write a notice of Mr. C. K. Sharpe's edition of Kirkton's Secret and True History of the Church of Scotland, for the Edinburgh Review, to which Scott replies, August 5:—
"I flatter myself it will not require many protestations to assure you with what pleasure I would undertake any book that can give you pleasure; but in the present case I am hampered by two circumstances: one, that I promised Gifford a review of this very Kirkton for the Quarterly; the other that I shall certainly be unable to keep my word with him. I am obliged to take exercise three or four hours in the forenoon and two after dinner, to keep off the infernal spasms which since last winter have attacked me with such violence, as if all the imps that used to plague poor Caliban were washing, wringing, and ironing the unshapely but useful bag which Sir John Sinclair treats with such distinction—my stomach, in short. Now, as I have much to do of my own, I fear I can hardly be of use to you in the present case, which I am very sorry for, as I like the subject, and would be pleased to give my own opinion respecting the Jacobitism of the editor, which, like my own, has a good spice of affectation in it, mingled with some not unnatural feelings of respect for a cause which, though indefensible in common sense and ordinary policy, has a great deal of high-spirited Quixotry about it.
"Can you not borrow from your briefs and criticism a couple of days to look about you here? I dare not ask Mrs. Jeffrey till next year, when my hand will be out of the mortar-tub; and at present my only spare bed was till of late but accessible by the feudal accommodation of a drawbridge made of two deals, and still requires the clue of Ariadne.... I am like one of Miss Edgeworth's heroines, master of all things in miniature—a little hill, and a little glen, and a little horse-pond of a loch, and a little river, I was going to call it,—the Tweed; but I remember the minister was mobbed by his parishioners for terming it, in his statistical report, an inconsiderable stream. So pray do come and see me, and if I can stead you, or pleasure you, in the course of the winter, you shall command me."—Cockburn's Life of Jeffrey, vol. i p. 417.][Back to Main Text]