Life of Sir Walter Scott, with Abbotsford Notanda

by Robert Chambers; Robert Carruthers

Scott was now at ease in his circumstances. He had a pleasant house in Edinburgh, No. 39 Castle Street—‘dear 39,’ as he affectionately called it—where he enjoyed the best society in the Scottish capital. Then, for recreation, he had that fanciful but costly domain on the Tweed. His ordinary and assured income sufficed for any domestic expenditure he chose to indulge in; the recent embarrassments were at an end; and he might calculate on easily adding a few occasional thousands, for the sake of posterity, by no very great exertion of his ever-fertile brain. But who of mortal mould can ever say ‘enough,’ especially when the temptation of great facility in acquiring is before him. For Scott at this time to grow from the idea of a cottage retreat in the country, to that of a little lairdship and a good sort of mansion, was certainly very natural, when he found that the work of little more than a month at any time could secure him enough of money to buy from fifty to a hundred acres of ground. It was the more so in his case, as his education, and the original bent of his own feelings, alike tended to create in him a veneration for the possession of land. Add to this, that he had a taste for planting and decoration, and felt a genial joy in being bread-giver to a retinue of that kindly peasantry whose virtues he has himself depicted in such lively colours. Of vulgar ambition for wealth and state, there was in Scott not one particle: to be a chief of the soil and its people, and contemplate his children as succeeding him in the same character, was only, with him, to realise, or set forth in substance, one of the poetical dreams which haunted his mind. It is therefore not surprising at this period to find him far from being disposed to suspend his energies, even although he might have done so under the excuse of somewhat broken health, for he now had frequent visits of stomach-cramp—in no small degree a consequence of some of his literary habits.

The spring of 1816 saw the public in possession of his novel of The Antiquary, perhaps, of all his works, the one in which there is most of the current matter of his own mind. It was scarcely published before he had designed his Tales of My Landlord, the first series of which came out, as by a new author, in December, and was at once hailed with all the applause accorded to its predecessors, and set down as another offshoot of the same tree. Early in 1817 appeared Harold the Dauntless, which, not bearing his name, and being even a greater failure than any of his recent poems, formed the last of that class of his publications. The public might now, perhaps, have had a more rapid succession of novels from his pen, if he had not thought proper to write the historical part of his Annual Register, in a vain hope to float that unfortunate work into popularity. As it was, he produced this year his novel of Rob Roy, which came out at New Year 1818, and experienced a brilliant reception. So great was his sense of the encouragement extended to these novels, that in 1817 he made purchase of an addition to his property, involving an outlay of no less than £10,000. Just to shew, however, how much generosity towards others was mixed with the no way mean ambition of Scott, his prime object here was to secure a residence for his old school-friend, Adam Ferguson, and his sisters, whom he was eager to plant near his own fireside. On his concluding a rather hasty bargain for this estate, Ferguson expressed his surprise and concern at seeing him exert so little pains to cheapen it. ‘Never say a word about it,’ said Scott; ‘it will just answer you and the ladies exactly; and it’s only scribbling a little more nonsense some of these mornings, to pay anything it costs me more than enough.’ From calculations of this kind, Scott is understood to have bought nearly the whole of his landed property at a very large percentage above its actual value.

From this time till the close of 1825—a space of eight years—prosperity reigned unchecked over the life of Scott. His novels of The Heart of Mid-Lothian, The Bride of Lammermoor, The Legend of Montrose, Ivanhoe, The Monastery, The Abbot, The Pirate, Kenilworth, The Fortunes of Nigel, Peveril of the Peak, Quentin Durward, St Ronan’s Well, Redgauntlet, and the Tales of the Crusaders, streamed from his pen with a rapidity as wonderful as their general merits were great. The public read with delight, and Scott was happy to pipe to a dance which led to such solid results for his own benefit. Generally, the first burst of sale called for ten thousand copies, after which the books continued to go off in large numbers in handsome collective reprints. It is odd after all, since Scott had shewed a desire to increase his gains by being his own printer and publisher, that he gave these books to be published by Constable, or whatever other person, on the principle of a division of the profits—a plan far too favourable to the tradesman, considering that the works were sure to sell with little aid from that quarter. A more grasping author would have given them to be published on commission, and thus realised the whole profit excepting a fraction. The only deduction he made from this liberality to the actual publisher consisted in its being a point with him that the Ballantynes should have a share of that portion of the profits—a mere grace on his part towards men for whom he entertained a friendship. In 1819, Messrs Constable and Company agreed to give him, for the copyright of the novels published up to that time, and certain shares of poetical copyrights, the sum of £12,000. Two years later, the same booksellers purchased for £5000 the copyright of four succeeding novels—little more than a year’s work—from which the author had already drawn £10,000. After another similar interval, the author received five thousand guineas for other four novels, which likewise had previously yielded him half-profits. Scott spoke of these sums with triumph and pleasure, as wonderful prices for what he was pleased to call his yeld kye—that is, cows which have ceased to give milk. Such a result of successful authorship was a surprising novelty in its day. Nor was the author alone blessed by the pecuniary productiveness of the Waverley Novels. We find the Edinburgh theatrical manager realising £3000 by the brilliant run of the drama formed from Rob Roy. A painter gets £300 for sketches to illustrate a section of the tales.

If we reflect on the facility with which Scott could write these inimitable novels—devoting to them merely the mornings of a life full of other business and of amusement—we can hardly be surprised to learn that he thought nothing of entering into engagements with Constable and Company for producing four novels, not one line of which had then been written, nor even the leading theme determined on. Nor was it wonderful that he should have gradually been tempted to build additions to his house on Tweedside till it became the architectural romance which it now is, and fitted to receive and entertain a large assortment of company.

The house of Abbotsford, where Sir Walter Scott chiefly spent the last twenty years of his life, may be assumed as the centre of a great part of that region which we have styled his. This ‘romance in stone and lime,’ as some Frenchman termed it, is situated on the south bank of the Tweed, at that part of its course where the river bursts forth from the mountainous region of the forest into the more open country of Roxburghshire, two or three miles above the abbey of Melrose, and six-and-thirty from Edinburgh. Though upon a small scale, the Gothic battlements and turrets have a good effect, and would have a still better, if the site of the house were not somewhat straitened by the bank rising above it, and by the too close neighbourhood of the public road. Descriptions of the house, with its armoury, its library, its curiosities, and other particular features, have been given in so many different publications, that no repetition here is necessary. The house, if it be properly preserved, will certainly be perused by future generations as only a different kind of emanation of the genius of this wonderful man; though, preserve it as you will, it will probably be, of all his works, the soonest to perish.

All around Abbotsford, and what gave it a great part of its value in his eyes, are the scenes commemorated in Border history, and tradition, and song. The property itself comprises the spot on which the last feudal battle was fought in this part of the country. The abbeys of Melrose and Dryburgh, the latter of which now contains the revered dust of the minstrel; the Eildon Hills, renowned in the annals of superstition; Selkirk, whose brave burghers won glory in the field where so much was lost by others, namely, at Flodden; Ettrick Forest, with its lone and storied dales; and Yarrow, whose stream and ‘dowie dens’ are not to be surveyed without involuntary poetry—are all in the near neighbourhood of the spot. The love, the deep, heartfelt love which Scott bore to the land which contains these places, was such as no stranger can appreciate. It was a passion absorbing many others which might have been expected to hold sway over him, and it survived to the last.

Scott was social and good-natured; to see him and his mansion was an object of ambition to half the public, including the highest persons in the land. He was thus led, during the seven months of the year which he spent in the country, to be the host of so many persons of every kind, that his wife spoke of the house as a hotel in all but the name. Not that he would have voluntarily indulged in any undue expense on this account, if he had been in limited circumstances; but believing himself to be able to afford it, benevolence gave her irresistible dictate that he should thus make himself the servant of the public, even at the expense of much personal inconvenience to himself and his family. It is stated in Mr Lockhart’s biography that sixteen uninvited parties came in one day to Abbotsford. These would pass quickly away; but fashionable tourists, some of them of high rank, came in scarcely smaller shoals, to stay one or two days. A lady reports to us, from the conversation of Miss Anne Scott, the younger daughter of Sir Walter, that on one occasion there were thirteen ladies’-maids in the house.

In 1820, Scott was made a baronet. The honour was unsolicited, and he considered himself as accepting it, partly because it was gratifying to his family, and partly with a view to the interests of his eldest son, who had entered a hussar regiment. If he had any enjoyment of the honour in his own breast, it probably arose from no common worldly vanity, but from its touching on some string of romantic feeling amongst those to which we owe his delightful works. Though now a laird and a man of title, as well as the head idol in the temple of the intellect-worshippers of his time, he was no whit different from what he had been in his younger days, when content with love and a cottage at Lasswade. His personal tastes and habits, his bearing to his friends, his familiarity with the poor and lowly, remained the same. As Wilkes is said to have never been a Wilkite, so Scott never, to any appearance, joined the opinion which the world entertained about him as an author. He spoke of his labours in this manner to Southey: ‘Dallying with time—tossing my ball and driving my hoop.’ Such men as Davy and Watt he considered as the true honour of his age and country. At home, in the bosom of his family, when the world would let him alone, he was the most simple and kindly of associates. As he walked about his grounds, he conversed freely and easily with his servants and the peasantry, amongst whom he was an object of the deepest reverence and affection. Often would this illustrious man work half a day at the felling of trees in his woods, beside several workmen, trying which could cut down one with the fewest blows, and laughing heartily when he was victor. He delighted to walk in the evening towards the house of an aged servant, that he might hear the psalm which the old man was raising with his wife, as they conducted their evening devotions. One of his retinue said to a visitor one day: ‘Sir Walter speaks to every man as if they were blood-relations.’ It was not a condescending kind of talk he indulged in with these people. He entered into their feelings and tastes, and, speaking their own homely dialect, witched them out of the idea that a master or a laird was before them.

The year 1822 was a somewhat memorable one in Scott’s life, on account of the concern he had to take in the arrangements necessary on the occasion of the king’s visit to Scotland. The external character of this piece of pageantry was much determined by that revival of national and medieval associations which the novels had effected. Everywhere we were reminded of the Stuarts in Holyrood, and the plaided clansmen on their mountains. Feelings due towards the romantic kings of an elder day were expended, often ludicrously, on the battered beau of Carlton House and St James’s Street. Amidst the delirium of the time, the man chiefly concerned in giving it a peculiar character, moved in perfect possession of his wonderful powers of management, dictating or advising in the principal doings, and attending to the minutest details of many of them. The king afterwards expressed, both formally and in private, his deep sense of obligation to Scott for what he had done to make this visit pass off well. The affair is interesting for the proof it gives of the business genius of Scott, and his qualifications for the affairs of the world. Assuredly never was high imagination united with so many of the soberest mental qualities as in his instance.

His qualifications as a man of the world shone in various functions which he consented to assume about this time, as the presidency of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, that of an antiquarian book-printing association called the Bannatyne Club, the chairmanship of an oil-gas factory, and so forth. He had no inclination to thrust himself into such situations, but having been drawn into them, he set about the business which they involved with all the requisite zeal, and with a marvellous amount of skill, good temper, and judgment. The common-sense and sagacity which he exhibited in the performance of these duties, form, perhaps, a greater distinction between Scott and the generality of literary men than even his transcendent genius.