‘There are many little jobs about the walks,’ writes the busy and happy laird, ‘which, though Tom Purdie contemns them, are not less necessary towards comfort: a seat or two, for example, and covering any drains, so as to let the pony pass. In the front of the old Rispylaw (now Anne’s Hill) is an old quarry, which, a little made up and accommodated with stone seats and some earth to grow a few honeysuckles and sweet-briers, would make a very sweet place. Many of the walks will thole’ [bear] ‘a mending; for instance, that to the thicket might be completely gravelled, as Mrs Scott uses it so much.’
Here the kindly, loving nature of the man peeps out. To Tom himself, Scott writes in a big, plain, round hand:
‘As Mrs Scott comes out on the 22d, and brings some plants to cover the paling of the court, you must have a border of about a spade’s breadth and a spade’s depth dug nicely, and made up with good earth and a little dung, all along in front of the paling, and along the east end of it. She will bring the plants from Edinburgh, so they can be put into the ground the evening she arrives.’
Afterwards, as years ran on, a thread of business was intermixed with the rural pleasure. The poet began to calculate on the probable return from the woods, not omitting the value of the bark used for tanning purposes.
‘Dear Willie—How could you be such a gowk’ [fool] ‘as to suppose I meant to start a hare upon you by my special inquiries about the bark? I am perfectly sensible you take more care of my affairs than you would of your own; but anything about wood or trees amuses me, and I like to enter into it more particularly than into ordinary farming operations. In particular, this of drying and selling our bark—at present a trifle—is a thing which will one day be of great consequence, and I wish to attend to the details myself. I think it should not be laid on the ground, but dried upon stools made of the felled wood; and if you lay along these stools the peeled trees, and pile the bark on them, it will hide the former from the sun, and suffer them to dry gradually. I have been observing this at Blair-Adam. I have got a new light on larch-planting from the Duke of Athole’s operations. He never plants closer than eight feet, and says they answer admirably. If this be so, it will be easy to plant our hill-ground. Respecting the grass in the plantations, I have some fears of the scythe, and should prefer getting a host of women with their hooks, which would also be a good thing for the poor folks.’ [Another touch of the poet’s kindly nature.] ‘Tom must set about it instantly. He is too much frightened for the expense of doing things rapidly, as if it were not as cheap to employ twelve men for a week as six men for a fortnight.—Yours,
W. S.’
In the matter of dwellings for the small tenants and labourers, the laird of Abbotsford was equally careful and considerate. ‘I think stone partitions would be desirable on account of vermin, &c. If their houses are not comfortable, the people will never be cleanly. For windows I would much prefer the cast-iron lattices, turning on a centre, and not made too large. These windows being in small quarrels, or panes, a little breach is easily repaired, and saves the substitute of a hat or clout through a large hole. Certainly the cottages should be rough-plastered.’ Perhaps the little iron lattices were as much preferred for their antique, picturesque associations as for their utility—‘something poetical,’ as Pope’s old gardener said of the drooping willow; and the aged minstrel’s hut near Newark Tower, it will be recollected, had such a window:
‘The little garden hedged with green,
A cheerful hearth and lattice clean.’
When times were hard and winter severe, he thought of the firesides of the labourers: