It brought the last touch of tragedy and of heroism to the closing scene of that noble life—to the passing of the marvellous power, the warm and generous heart, the gallant spirit that was Walter Scott. He enjoyed, however, many happy days in Abbotsford; it is associated more with his triumphs than with his misfortunes. Here he trod his fields, delighted “to call this wooded patch of earth his own”, entertained literary celebrities like Washington Irving, Maria Edgeworth, and the Wordsworths, held almost feudal receptions of his retainers and neighbours, talked and walked with his familiars—Lockhart, Skene, Cranstoun, the “beloved Erskine”—and with his “ain folk”, and planned and wrote his novels. Tweed sings a blither as well as a fuller strain since he dwelt by it.
Into the house, he built material more substantial than his hopes. Scott had the antiquarian temper and taste; and like Burns’s Grose, and his own Oldbuck, he gathered about him “a routh o’ auld nicknackets”, many of them the free-will offering of admirers. In this way the door of the old Edinburgh Tolbooth—the “Heart of Midlothian”—came into his possession, along with the ponderous lock and key over which “Daddie Ratton” had held charge. Sculptured and inscribed stones from the High Street and Canongate houses have also found their way here; while within the house has been collected a museum of Border antiquities, along with portraits, and personal souvenirs and relics, gathered from all corners of the land. The house has been left “very much as in Sir Walter’s time”; and a constant stream of pilgrims visits it. In the library are relics of Napoleon, of Prince Charlie and Flora Macdonald, of Nelson and Wellington; in the drawing-room, among other famous pictures, is Raeburn’s portrait of Scott; in the armoury, memorials of Rob Roy, Montrose, Claverhouse, and Archbishop Sharpe, and the keys of Loch Leven Castle, while on the walls are blazoned the escutcheons of “ye Clannis and men of name quha keepit ye Scottish Marches in the days of auld”. But more impressive than any of these things are the chair in which Scott sat to write or dictate and the pen that in his hand was as a magician’s rod.
The way from Abbotsford to Selkirk, by the valleys of the Tweed and Ettrick, past Fawdonside and Lindean, was a familiar one to the “Shirra”. He had legal and other county business that carried him often during a third of a century to the head town of his Forest Sheriffdom; and inclination went hand in hand with duty, for the road led to Ettrick and Yarrow, to “Sweet Bowhill” and to
“The shattered front of Newark’s towers
Renowned in Border story”.
ABBOTSFORD
Selkirk—the old “church of the shielings”, which, in the days when David I and his successors hunted in the forest of Ettrick, served the royal sportsmen for their orisons—narrowly missed being the seat of an Abbey. A colony of Tyronesian monks were settled in it more than eight centuries ago, but were removed, “for convenience”, to Kelso. The “Souters of Selkirk” have since given themselves to war, to shoemaking, and latterly to tweed manufacture. But the town has not neglected poetry, and bards of later date have been born and have sung in it, since Burns and Scott drew the “birse” across their lips. It is set well above the vale of the Ettrick, at the gate of the Haining policies; and its public buildings are gathered around the triangular market-place, in which stands a statue of Sir Walter in his sheriff’s robes. In the Free Library is hung the Flodden Standard brought home by the survivors of that day of disaster, when “the Flowers o’ the Forest were a’ wede awa’”.
In 1645 Montrose was resting, with his cavalry, in Selkirk, his infantry encamped at Philiphaugh, on the other side of Ettrick, when David Lesley crept up on him from Melrose, in the mist of a September morning. In two or three hours the fruits of nine brilliant victories were lost, and the great captain was a fugitive speeding across Minchmoor to Traquair, where, the door being shut on him, he passed on to Clydesdale and the Highlands. There have been many romantic crossings of Minchmoor, and meetings and partings at “Wallace’s Trench”—part of the old Catrail or Picts’ Dyke—and at the Cheese Well. Walter Scott accompanied his friend Mungo Park—whose statue stands near his own in the streets of Selkirk—when Park was starting on his African journey. They separated on the ridge above Williamhope, where, as has already been told, Sir William Douglas, the “Flower of Chivalry”, was slain by his cousin the Earl of Douglas, in revenge, it is said, for the most unchivalrous deed of the starving to death, in Hermitage Castle, of Sir Alexander de Ramsay. Across this high moor between Yarrow and Tweed came James V, with five belted earls, to the meeting with the “Outlaw Murray”, lord of Hangingshaws, and Newark, and Philiphaugh and other lands on Yarrow. The king’s message ran—
“Bid him meet me at Permanscore,[1]