Life of Sir Walter Scott, with Abbotsford Notanda

by Robert Chambers; Robert Carruthers

The changes of his parent dell.’[8]

We may here notice another poetical scene, the Bush aboon Traquair, celebrated in the well-known popular song by Crawford. Burns says that when he saw the old bush in 1787, it was composed of eight or nine ragged birches, and that the Earl of Traquair had planted a clump of trees near the place, which he called ‘The New Bush.’ Laidlaw maintained that the new bush was in reality the old bush of the song. One of the sons of Murray of Philiphaugh used to come over often on foot, and meet one of the ladies of Traquair at the Cless, a green hollow at the foot of the hill that overhangs Traquair House. This was the scene of the song. The straggling birches that Burns saw are half a mile up the water, the remains of a wooded bog—out of sight of Traquair House, to be sure, but far out of the way between Hanginshaw, on the Yarrow, and Traquair.

One morning in autumn 1804 was vividly impressed on the recollection of Laidlaw; for Scott then recited to him nearly the whole of the Lay of the Last Minstrel, as they journeyed together in the sheriff’s gig up Gala Water. The wild, irregular structure of the poem, the description of the old minstrel, the goblin machinery, the ballads interspersed throughout the tale, and the exquisite forest scenes (the Paradise of Ettrick), all entranced the listener. Now and then, Scott would stop to tell an anecdote of the country they were passing through, and afterwards, in his deep serious voice, resume his recitation of the poem. Laidlaw had, the night before, gone to Lasswade, where the sheriff then resided in a beautiful cottage on the banks of the Esk; and on the following morning, after breakfast, they went up the Gala, when Scott poured forth what truly seemed to be an unpremeditated lay. They returned about sunset, and found the sheriff’s young and beautiful wife looking on at the few shearers engaged in cutting down their crop in a field adjoining the cottage. Mrs Scott seemed to Laidlaw a ‘lovely and interesting creature,’ and the sheriff met her with undisguised tenderness and affection. This was indeed his golden prime:

‘How happily the days of Thalaba went by!’

After this period, Laidlaw commenced householder, entering on extensive farming experiments; and, so long as the war lasted and high prices prevailed, his schemes promised to be ultimately successful. But with peace came a sudden fall in the market value of corn. He struggled on with adverse circumstances for a twelvemonth, till capital and credit failed, and he was obliged to abandon his lease.

In the summer of 1817, we find him at Kaeside, on the estate of Abbotsford. At first, this seemed a temporary arrangement. The two friends had kept up a constant intercourse after Scott’s visit to the Yarrow in 1802. Presents of trout and blackcock from the country, and return presents of books from Castle Street, in Edinburgh, were interchanged; and, when Laidlaw’s evil day was at hand, Scott said: ‘Come to Abbotsford, and help me with my improvements. I can put you into a house on the estate—Kaeside—and get you some literary work from the Edinburgh publishers.’ The offer was cheerfully accepted, and the connection became permanent. Scott had then commenced building and planting on a large scale; and the same year he made his most extensive purchase—the lands of Toftfield, for which he gave £10,000.

‘I have more than once—such was his modesty’—said Laidlaw, ‘heard Sir Walter assert that had his father left him an estate of £500 or £600 a year, he would have spent his time in miscellaneous reading, not writing. This, to a certain extent, might have been the case; and had he purchased the property of Broadmeadows, in Yarrow, as he at one time was very anxious to do, and when the neighbourhood was in the possession of independent proprietors, the effect might have been the same. At Abbotsford, surrounded by little lairds, most of them ready to sell their lands as soon as he had money to advance, the impulse to exertion was incessant; for the desire to possess and to add increased with every new acquisition, until it became a passion of no small power. Then came the hope to be a large landed proprietor, and to found a family.’

When the poet was in Edinburgh attending to his official duties as Clerk of Session, he sighed for Abbotsford and the country, and took the liveliest interest in all that was going on under the superintendence of his friend. Passages like the following remind us of the writings of Gilpin and Price on forest and picturesque scenery:

‘George must stick in a few wild-roses, honeysuckles, and sweet-briers in suitable places, so as to produce the luxuriance we see in the woods which Nature plants herself. We injure the effect of our plantings, so far as beauty is concerned, very much by neglecting underwood.... I want to know how you are forming your glades of hard wood. Try to make them come handsomely in contact with each other, which you can only do by looking at a distance on the spot, then and there shutting your eyes as you have done when a child looking at the fire, and forming an idea of the same landscape with glades of woodland crossing it. Get out of your ideas about expense. It is, after all, but throwing away the price of the planting. If I were to buy a picture worth £500, nobody would wonder much. Now, if I choose to lay out £100 or £200 to make a landscape of my estate hereafter, and add so much more to its value, I certainly don’t do a more foolish thing. I mention this, that you may not feel limited so much as you might in other cases by the exact attention to pounds, shillings, and pence, but consider the whole on a liberal scale. We are too apt to consider plantations as a subject of the closest economy, whereas beauty and taste have even a marketable value after the effects come to be visible. Don’t dot the plantations with small patches of hard wood, and always consider the ultimate effect.’

It is pleasant to see from the Laidlaw manuscripts with what alacrity and zeal the noble friends of the poet came forward with kindly contributions. The Duke of Buccleuch sent bushels of acorns; the Earl of Fife presented seed of Norway pines; Lord Montagu forwarded a box of acorns and a packet of lime-seed. One arboricultural missive to the factor says: ‘I send the seeds of the Corsican pine, got with great difficulty, and also two or three of an unknown species which grows to a great height on the Apennines. Dr Graham says they should be raised in mould, finely prepared, under glass, but without artificial heat.’ A box of fine chestnuts came from Lisbon: the box was sent on from Edinburgh to Abbotsford unopened, and before Laidlaw heard of them, the chestnuts were peeled, and rendered useless for planting. ‘Confound the chestnuts, and those who peeled them!’ exclaimed Scott; ‘the officious blockheads did it by way of special favour.’ One object was to form at the top of the dikes an impenetrable copse or natural hedge or verdurous screen—the poet uses all the epithets (Milton has ‘verdurous wall’); and for this purpose there were sent from Edinburgh 3000 laburnums, 2000 sweet-briers, 3000 Scotch elms, 3000 horse-chestnuts, loads of hollies, poplars for the marshy ground, and filberts for the glen. The graceful birch-tree, ‘the lady of the wood,’ was not, of course, neglected. ‘I am so fond of the birch,’ writes the poet; ‘and it makes such a beautiful and characteristic underwood, that I think we can hardly have too many. Besides, we may plant them as hedges.’ He purchased at this time about 100,000 birches. Mr Morritt of Rokeby writes to a friend: ‘He (Scott) tells me he never was so happy in his life as in having a place of his own to create. In this Caledonian Eden, he labours all day with his own hands; though, since the Fall, he and his wife will not find many luxuriant branches to prune in Ettrick Forest I sent him a bushel of Yorkshire acorns, which, except docks and thistles, are, I believe, likely to be in three years the largest vegetables upon the domain.’[9]