LETTER XV.
SCOTCH SCENERY—A RACE—CHEAPNESS OF LODGINGS IN EDINBURGH—ABBOTTSFORD—SCOTT—LORD DALHOUSIE—THOMAS MOORE—JANE PORTER—THE GRAVE OF SCOTT.
I was delighted to find Stirling rather worse than Albany in the matter of steamers. I had a running fight for my portmanteau and carpet-bag from the hotel to the pier, and was at last embarked in entirely the wrong boat, by sheer force of pulling and lying. They could scarce have put me in a greater rage between Cruttenden’s and the Overslaugh.
The two rival steamers, the Victory and the Ben Lomond, got under way together; the former, in which I was a compulsory passenger, having a flagelet and a bass drum by way of a band, and the other a dozen lusty performers and most of the company. The river was very narrow and the tide down, and though the other was the better boat, we had the bolder pilot, and were lighter laden and twice as desperate. I found my own spunk stirred irresistibly after the first mile. We were contending against odds, and there was something in it that touched my Americanism nearly. We had three small boys mounted on the box over the wheel, who cheered and waved their hats at our momentary advantages; but the channel was full of windings, and if we gained on the larboard tack we lost on the starboard. Whenever we were quite abreast and the wheels touched with the narrowness of the river, we marched our flagelet and bass-drum close to the enemy and gave them a blast “to wake the dead,” taking occasion, during our moments of defeat, to recover breath and ply the principal musician with beer and encouragement. It was a scene for Cooper to describe. The two pilots stood broad on their legs, every muscle on the alert; and though Ben Lomond wore the cleaner jacket, Victory had the “varminter” look. You would have bet on Victory to have seen the man. He was that wickedest of all wicked things, a wicked Scotchman—a sort of saint-turned-sinner. The expression of early good principles was glazed over with drink and recklessness, like a scene from the Inferno painted over a Madonna of Raphael’s. It was written in his face that he was a transgressor against knowledge. We were perhaps, a half-dozen passengers, exclusive of the boys, and we rallied round our Bardolph nosed hero and applauded his skilful manœuvres; sun, steam, and excitement together, producing a temperature on deck that left nothing to dread from the boiler. As we approached a sharp bend in the course of the stream, I perceived by the countenance of our pilot, that it was to be a critical moment. The Ben Lomond was a little ahead, but we had the advantage of the inside of the course, and very soon, with the commencement of the curve, we gained sensibly on the enemy, and I saw clearly that we should cut her off by a half-boat’s length. The three boys on the wheel began to shout, the flagelet made all split again with “the Campbells are comin’,” the bass-drum was never so belabored, and “Up with your helm!” cried every voice, as we came at the rate of twelve miles in the hour sharp on to the angle of mud and bulrushes, and, to our utter surprise, the pilot jammed down his tiller, and ran the battered nose of the Victory plump in upon the enemy’s forward quarter! The next moment we were going it like mad down the middle of the river, and far astern stuck the Ben Lomond in the mud, her paddles driving her deeper at every stroke, her music hushed, and the crowd on her deck standing speechless with amazement. The flagelet and bass-drum marched aft and played louder than ever, and we were soon in the open Frith, getting on merrily, but without competition, to the sleeping isle of Inchkeith. Lucky Victory! luckier pilot! to have found an historian! How many a red-nosed Palinurus—how many a bass drum and flagelet, have done their duty as well, yet achieved no immortality.
I was glad to see “Auld Reekie” again, though the influx of strangers to the “Scientific Meeting” had over-run every hotel, and I was an hour or two without a home. I lit at last upon a good old Scotchwoman who had “a flat” to herself, and who, for the sum of one shilling and sixpence per diem, proposed to transfer her only boarder from his bed to a sofa, as long as I should wish to stay. I made a humane remonstrance against the inconvenience to her friend. “It’s only a Jew,” she said, “and they’re na difficult, puir bodies!” The Hebrew came in while we were debating the point—a smirking gentleman, with very elaborate whiskers, much better dressed than the proposed usurper of his sanctum—and without the slightest hesitation professed that nothing would give him so much pain as to stand in the way of his landlady’s interest. So for eighteen-pence—and I could not prevail on her to take another farthing—I had a Jew put to inconvenience, a bed, boots and clothes brushed, and Mrs. Mac—to sit up for me till two in the morning—what the Jew himself would have called a “cheap article.”
I returned to my delightful quarters at Dalhousie Castle on the following day, and among many excursions in the neighborhood during the ensuing week, accomplished a visit to Abbottsford. This most interesting of all spots has been so minutely and so often described, that a detailed account of it would be a mere repetition. Description, however, has anticipated nothing to the visiter. The home of Sir Walter Scott would possess an interest to thrill the heart, if it were as well painted to the eye of fancy as the homes of his own heroes.
It is a dreary country about Abbottsford, and the house itself looks from a distance like a small, low castle, buried in stunted trees, on the side of a long, sloping upland or moor. The river is between you and the chateau as you come down to Melrose from the north, and you see the gray towers opposite you from the road at the distance of a mile—the only habitable spot in an almost desolate waste of country. From the town of Melrose you approach Abbottsford by a long, green lane, and, from the height of the hedge and the descending ground on which the house is built, you would scarce suspect its vicinity till you enter a small gate on the right and find yourself in an avenue of young trees. This conducts you immediately to the door, and the first effect on me was that of a spacious castle seen through a reversed glass. In fact it is a kind of castle cottage—not larger than what is often called a cottage in England, yet to the minutest point and proportion a model of an ancient castle. The deception in the engravings of the place lies in the scale. It seems like a vast building as usually drawn.
One or two hounds were lounging round the door; but the only tenant of the place was a slovenly housemaid, whom we interrupted in the profane task of scrubbing the furniture in the library. I could have pitched her and her scrubbing brushes out of the window with a good will. It is really a pity that this sacred place, with its thousand valuable and irreplaceable curiosities, should be so carelessly neglected. We were left to wander over the house and the museum as we liked. I could have brought away—and nothing is more common than this species of theft in England—twenty things from that rare collection, of which the value could scarce be estimated. The pistols and dagger of Rob Roy, and a hundred equally valuable and pocketable things, lay on the shelves unprotected, quite at the mercy of the ill-disposed, to say nothing of the merciless “cleanings” of the housemaid. The present Sir Walter Scott is a captain of dragoons, with his regiment in Ireland, and the place is never occupied by the family. Why does not Scotland buy Abbotsford, and secure to herself, while it is still perfect, the home of her great magician, and the spot that to after ages would be, if preserved in its curious details, the most interesting in Great Britain?
After showing us the principal rooms, the woman opened a small closet adjoining the study, in which hung the last clothes that Sir Walter had worn. There was the broad-skirted blue coat with large buttons, the plaid trousers, the heavy shoes, the broad-rimmed hat and stout walking-stick—the dress in which he rambled about in the morning, and which he laid off when he took to his bed in his last illness. She took down the coat and gave it a shake and a wipe of the collar, as if he were waiting to put it on again!