Famous Persons and Places

by Nathaniel Parker Willis

It was encroaching somewhat on the province of Touchstone and Wamba to moralize on a suit of clothes—but I am convinced I got from them a better idea of Scott, as he was in his familiar hours, than any man can have who has seen neither him nor them. There was a character in the hat and shoes. The coat was an honest and hearty coat. The stout, rough walking-stick, seemed as if it could have belonged to no other man. I appeal to my kind friends and fellow travellers who were there three days before me (I saw their names on the book,) if the same impression was not made on them.

I asked for the room in which Sir Walter died. She showed it to me, and the place where the bed had stood, which was now removed. I was curious to see the wall or the picture over which his last looks must have passed. Directly opposite the foot of the bed hung a remarkable picture—the head of Mary Queen of Scots, in a dish taken after her execution. The features were composed and beautiful. On either side of it hung spirited drawings from the Tales of a Grandfather—one very clever sketch, representing the wife of a border-knight serving up her husband’s spurs for dinner, to remind him of the poverty of the larder and the necessity of a foray. On the left side of the bed was a broad window to the west—the entrance of the last light to his eyes—and from hence had sped the greatest spirit that has walked the world since Shakspeare. It almost makes the heart stand still to be silent and alone on such a spot.

What an interest there is in the trees of Abbotsford—planted every one by the same hand that waved its wand of enchantment over the world! One walks among them as if they had thoughts and memories.

Everybody talks of Scott who has ever had the happiness of seeing him, and it is strange how interesting it is even when there is no anecdote, and only the most commonplace interview is narrated. I have heard, since I have been in England, hundreds of people describe their conversations with him, and never the dullest without a certain interest far beyond that of common topics. Some of these have been celebrated people, and there is the additional weight that they were honored friends of Sir Walter’s.

Lord Dalhousie told me that he was Scott’s playfellow at the high school of Edinboro’. There was a peculiar arrangement of the benches with a head and foot, so that the boys sat above or below, according to their success in recitation. It so happened that the warmest seat in the school, that next to the stove, was about two from the bottom, and this Scott, who was a very good scholar, contrived never to leave. He stuck to his seat from autumn till spring, never so deficient as to get down, and never choosing to answer rightly if the result was to go up. He was very lame, and seldom shared in the sports of the other boys, but was a prodigious favorite, and loved to sit in the sunshine, with a knot of boys around him, telling stories. Lord Dalhousie’s friendship with him was uninterrupted through life, and he invariably breakfasted at the castle on his way to and from Edinboro’.

I met Moore at a dinner party not long since, and Scott was again, (as at a previous dinner I have described) the subject of conversation. “He was the soul of honesty,” said Moore. “When I was on a visit to him, we were coming up from Kelso at sunset, and as there was to be a fine moon, I quoted to him his own rule for seeing ‘fair Melrose aright,’ and proposed to stay an hour and enjoy it. ‘Bah!’ said he, ‘I never saw it by moonlight.’ We went, however; and Scott, who seemed to be on the most familiar terms with the cicerone, pointed to an empty niche and said to him, ‘I think, by the way, that I have a Virgin and Child that will just do for your niche. I’ll send it to you!’ ‘How happy you have made that man!’ said I to him. ‘Oh,’ said Scott, ‘it was always in the way, and Madame S. is constantly grudging it house-room. We’re well rid of it.’

“Any other man,” said Moore, “would have allowed himself at least the credit of a kind action.”

I have had the happiness since I have been in England of passing some weeks at a country house where Miss Jane Porter was an honored guest, and, among a thousand of the most delightful reminiscences that were ever treasured, she has told me a great deal of Scott, who visited at her mother’s as a boy. She remembers him then as a good-humored lad, but very fond of fun, who used to take her younger sister, (Anna Maria Porter) and frighten her by holding her out of the window. Miss Porter had not seen him since that age; but, after the appearance of Guy Mannering, she heard that he was in London, and drove with a friend to his house. Not quite sure (as she modestly says) of being remembered, she sent in a note, saying, that if he remembered the Porters, whom he used to visit, Jane would like to see him. He came rushing to the door, and exclaimed, “Remember you! Miss Porter,” and threw his arms about her neck and burst into tears. After this he corresponded constantly with the family, and about the time of his first stroke of paralysis, when his mind and memory failed him, the mother of Miss Porter died, and Scott sent a letter of condolence. It began—“Dear Miss Porter”—but, as he went on, he forgot himself, and continued the letter as if addressed to her mother, ending it with—“And now, dear Mrs. Porter, farewell! and believe me yours for ever (as long as there is anything of me) Walter Scott.” Miss Porter bears testimony, like every one else who knew him, to his greatheartedness no less than to his genius.

I am not sure that others like as well as myself these “nothings” about men of genius. I would rather hear the conversation between Scott and a peasant on the road, for example, than the most piquant anecdote of his brighter hours. I like a great mind in dishabille.

We returned by Melrose Abbey, of which I can say nothing new, and drove to Dryburgh to see the grave of Scott. He is buried in a rich old Gothic corner of a ruin—fittingly. He chose the spot, and he sleeps well. The sunshine is broken on his breast by a fretted and pinnacled window, over-run with ivy, and the small chapel in which he lies is open to the air, and ornamented with the mouldering scutcheons of his race. There are few more beautiful ruins than Dryburgh Abbey, and Scott lies in its sunniest and most fanciful nook—a grave that seems divested of the usual horrors of a grave.