Chapter X Around Abbotsford
Whilst this work deals mainly with Abbotsford, it will be fitting to refer briefly to one or two places within what may be called the Abbotsford radius. At least half a dozen scenes of interest can be visited with profit by the literary pilgrim. Abbotsford is his Mecca par excellence, and it is here that homage must rise to its full height. Abbotsford is but the centre, however, of a widely historic locality, in which it may be possible to discover shrine after shrine, each demanding some show of devotion. Of course, Scott is the chief attractive force to the Scottish Border. But long before his day Tweedside and the country around Abbotsford lay in the very lap of ‘glamourie.’ And it was, as we have seen, largely because of the romance which haunted the whole district that Abbotsford took shape, to become by-and-by perhaps the most romantic spot in Europe.
Melrose—the Kennaquhair of the ‘Monastery’—is the most convenient headquarters for studying the homes and following the footprints of Sir Walter Scott. Scott may be said to have made Melrose. It was a mere village when Abbotsford was building. It really grew with the growth of Abbotsford, and in the wake of Scott’s success. The name—maol-ros, ‘the open or naked headland’—is a transfer from Old Melrose, two and a half miles further down the Tweed, where flourished the first monastic settlement, fragrant with the memories of Aidan, Boisil (whence St. Lessuden and St. Boswells), and most celebrated of them all, Cuthbert, that Leaderside shepherd lad, who rose to be head of the great See of Durham. It was David, ‘the Sair Sanct,’ who founded the second religious house of Melrose between the years 1136 and 1146. Dedicated to the Virgin, and tenanted by a colony of Cistercians from Rievalle, in Yorkshire, the pioneers of their Order in Scotland, Melrose quickly came to the front as the most famous establishment of its kind in the kingdom. For four centuries, like the rest of the Border Abbeys, Melrose held its place, and was a power in the land. During the Edwardian Wars it suffered frequently from fire and assault, and, indeed, about 1322, it was more or less a ruin. Mainly through the munificence of Robert the Bruce, it was rebuilt in 1326, ‘in the most magnificent style of the period,’ at a cost of £50,000 in modern money. By 1384 it was again sacked, this time by Richard II., and again restored. In 1544 Evers and Latoun, the English generals at Ancrum Moor, desecrated and demolished the Douglas tombs at Melrose, and in the following year, on the Hertford invasion, the work of destruction was complete. At the Reformation the Abbey was finally dismantled, and for long afterwards the ruin was used as a quarry by the towns-people. Not a little of the original Abbotsford found its way from Melrose Abbey. The statues, specially numerous and costly, were ‘ground to powder’ in 1649, and up to 1820 the nave was used as the parish church. Scott’s genius and patriotism have done more for Melrose than anything else. To him, in large measure, as the Biography shows, the place owes its preservation as the finest ecclesiastical ruin in the country. None knew Melrose Abbey better, or bore a dearer regard to it, than Scott, and its architecture is nowhere more faithfully described than in the ‘Lay.’ To read the ‘Lay’ at Melrose is one of the delights of a lifetime. The best view is from the south-east corner of the churchyard. By the high altar Bruce’s heart was interred. Here also lie the bodies of the brave Earl Douglas, hero of Otterburn, and of that other Douglas, the ‘dark knight of Liddesdale,’ a prominent figure in Border story. There, too, is the traditional grave of ‘the wondrous Wizard,’ Michael Scot, from whose cold dead hand Deloraine snatched the Book of Might. And many another—monarch and monk, priest and warrior, Border laird and lady—are at rest under these time-worn canopies. How interesting and touching to follow the inscriptions around the walls, and the numerous chaste carvings on ‘pillar and arch and lintel high.’ Two epitaphs outside call for attention, both connected with Scott. One, which he was fond of repeating—it is surely one of the most pregnant in epitaphian literature—runs:
‘The earth goeth on the earth,
Glist’ring like gold;
The earth goes to the earth
Sooner than it wold;
The earth builds on the earth
Castles and towers;
The earth says to the earth,
“All shall be ours.”’
The other, his own simple and sincere words, covering the grave of honest Tom Purdie:
IN GRATEFUL REMEMBRANCE
OF
THE FAITHFUL
AND ATTACHED SERVICES
OF
TWENTY-TWO YEARS,
AND IN SORROW
FOR THE LOSS OF A HUMBLE
BUT SINCERE FRIEND,
THIS STONE WAS ERECTED
BY
SIR WALTER SCOTT, BART.,
OF ABBOTSFORD.
HERE LIES THE BODY
OF
THOMAS PURDIE,
WOOD-FORESTER
AT ABBOTSFORD,
WHO DIED 29 OCTOBER,
1829,
AGED SIXTY-TWO YEARS.
‘Thou hast been faithful
Over a few things,
I will make thee ruler
Over many things.’
Matthew, chap. xxv. v. 21st.
Close under the Abbey windows reposes all that is mortal of the great Christian philosopher, Sir David Brewster. ‘The Lord is my Light’ is a not unfitting text for one who was the acknowledged master of optics in his day. Melrose Cross, in the centre of the town, with the date of its restoration (1642), is believed to be the oldest ‘mercat-cross’ in the Borders. From Melrose we may climb the clefted Eildons, always in vision, the supreme landmarks and sentinels of the Borderland. Here Scott loved to linger. ‘I can stand on the Eildon Hill,’ he said, ‘and point out forty-three places famous in war and verse.’ Or the romantic green-woods of the Fairy Dean may attract us, despite the ‘White Lady’ and her vagaries. And we may be led to explore Elwyndale and the fine open country to the head of the glen, with the three towers of the ‘Monastery,’ Hillslap or Glendearg—Dame Glendinning’s home—Langshaw, and Colmslie.
As a rule, the visitor to Abbotsford has also Dryburgh as an objective, and ample provision has been made for his ease and comfort in getting thither. By far the most picturesque route is to follow that of Scott’s funeral-day. Past Newstead first, quaintest of old-world hamlets, the supposed Roman Trimontium (from the Eildons, at whose base it nestles). Note its wealth of sun-dials. Thence, still keeping by the serpentine Tweed, to Leaderfoot, across its old Bridge—where was Scott’s last passing of the Tweed—up by Gladswood and Bemersyde Hill, pausing for a moment or two at ‘Sir Walter’s gate,’ on the crest of the whinny road—
‘Where fair Tweed flows round holy Melrose,
And Eildon slopes to the plain.’
This was Scott’s favourite view, and it has few equals. Did not Elihu Burritt affirm that ‘it is the most magnificent view I ever saw in Scotland, excepting, perhaps, the one from Stirling Castle’? Still pursuing our way Dryburghwards, we catch a glimpse of Sandyknowe36 to the east, the scene of Scott’s child-years, and enshrined in some of the noblest verse of ‘Marmion.’ Then, dipping down through the thickest and tallest of wild-woods, and the most luxuriant of bracken and broom, we reach Dryburgh, which, if it cannot boast the architectural glories of Melrose, far surpasses it for queenly situation. Surrounded on three sides by the Tweed, itself unseen from the Abbey precincts, and amidst a ‘brotherhood of venerable trees,’ in picturesqueness and seclusion it is perhaps the most charming monastic ruin in Great Britain. And here, in the lap of legends old, in the heart of the land he has made enchanted, and among his ancestral dust (for Dryburgh belonged to his forebears, and might have come to himself but for the stupidity of a spendthrift relative), Walter Scott waits the breaking light of morn. There are the inscriptions which we must read, and as reverent and worshipful pilgrims, heads are bared for this sacred duty. In 1847 a massive granite sarcophagus was placed over Scott’s grave, where thousands upon thousands from all the winds that blow have treasured its simple words:
SIR WALTER SCOTT, BARONET,
DIED SEPTEMBER 21, A.D. 1832.
‘Slender as a reed
Is the slim pillar on the transept tall,
Where the lush wall-flower blooms, and over all
A rowan grows, where some wind-wafted seed
Had lodged, and all is silent as a dream,
But for a throstle on the ancient yew,
But for the low faint murmur of the stream;
And sweet old-fashioned scents are floating through
The arch from thyme and briar, as for ever
Shall his sweet nature haunt this fabled river.’
The other inscriptions are:
DAME CHARLOTTE MARGARET CARPENTER,
WIFE OF
SIR WALTER SCOTT OF ABBOTSFORD, BARONET,
DIED AT ABBOTSFORD, MAY 15, 1826.
LIEUTENANT-COLONEL SIR WALTER SCOTT
OF ABBOTSFORD, SECOND BARONET,
DIED AT SEA, 8 FEBRUARY, 1847, AGED 45 YEARS.
HIS WIDOW PLACED THIS STONE OVER HIS GRAVE.
DAME JANE JOBSON,
HIS WIDOW,
DIED AT LONDON, 19 MARCH, 1877, AGED 76 YEARS.
These tombs and inscriptions follow each other from the back to the front of the aisle. And on the right of the others is Lockhart’s, at right angles, with a bronze medallion at the top:
HERE,
AT THE FEET OF SIR WALTER SCOTT,
LIE
THE MORTAL REMAINS OF
JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART,
HIS SON-IN-LAW,
BIOGRAPHER AND FRIEND.
BORN 14 JUNE, 1794.
DIED 25 NOV., 1854.
If we be wise, we shall make the return journey by Dryburgh village and Newtown. What a magnificent river the Tweed is here, looking either up or down from the Baillie Suspension Bridge, or the high red bank beyond! Surely the Eildons never backgrounded a pleasanter picture than this. All the landscape is, in sooth, among the fairest of fair scenes, on which we shall want to feast the eye again and again, to be dreaming of Dryburgh when, it may be, over the seas and far away. On a summer’s day, or at the early autumn, or even ’mid winter’s mantling white, it seems to carry a perpetual charm.
Kelso, as a shrine of Scott, may not be left unvisited. Here he was schooled (partly), but better, it was at Kelso that the whole world of Romance opened out to his delighted fancy. Robert Burns is said to have gazed in wondrous and even prayerful rapture on the vision of Kelso Bridge and the Tweed, forming an almost perfect picture. And this, with the Abbey, ‘like some antique Titan predominating over the dwarfs of a later world’; ruined Roxburgh, between Tweed’s and Teviot’s flow; and the near neighbourhood of other memory-moving spots, were just the scenes which made the best appeal to Scott, which influenced him most, and the fruits of whose inspiration we still daily reap. Jedburgh has some claim on the Scott student and for the lover of old romance. His best hours will be spent by its venerable Abbey, in the most excellent of situations (how well those old monks could gauge the lie of the land!), girt about with well-kept gardens, overlooking the bosky banks of the Jed—a veritable poem in Nature and Art.
‘Bosom’d in woods where mighty rivers run,
Kelso’s fair vale expands before the sun;
Its rising downs in vernal beauty swell,
And fringed with hazel winds each flowery dell;
Green-spangled plains to dimpling lawns succeed,
And Tempé rises on the banks of Tweed.
Blue o’er the river Kelso’s shadow lies,
And copse clad isles amid the waters rise.’
There is one place which should not be overlooked. To him who writes it is the sweetest and the best, entwined with memories lasting as life itself. With the story of Thomas of Ercildoune he first heard that of Sir Walter Scott. Under the weird shadow of the Rhymer’s Tower, other names fell upon his ear—Ashestiel, Abbotsford, ‘Marmion,’ ‘Waverley.’ Much has been since then! But home and the days of youth are never forgotten. One hears still in memory the music of the Leader. Across the years comes there again and again a sweet old-time fragrance of yellow broom from Cowdenknowes.
Footnotes
1 Abbotsford, with the accent on the ‘ford,’ A modern pronunciation accentuates the first syllable. This is wrong. Scott himself said Abbotsfòrd.
2 Turn-Again, where Ker of Cessford was slain and the victorious party turned from the pursuit. Skirmish Hill, Charge Law, and Cock-a-Pistol are other landmarks of the fight. The Waverley Hydropathic is said to mark the immediate scene of the struggle.
3 Lockhart and others have fallen (not unnaturally perhaps) into the error of supposing that ‘Clarty Hole’ was the real designation. Cartleyhole, however, was a very old name. Some wag possibly nicknamed the place ‘the Clarty Hole,’ which seems to have stuck to it.
4 Charles Carpenter, in the Indian Civil Service at Salem, Madras.
5 George Bullock and Edward Blore, London architects and furnishers. Atkinson was the artist who arranged the interior of Abbotsford.
6 The ‘Huntlee Bankis’ lie between Melrose and Newtown, on the eastern slope of the Eildons, on the left side of the highway as it bends round to the west, going towards, and within about two miles of, Melrose. The spot is indicated by the famous Eildon Tree Stone.
7 The place belonged in 1566 to Andrew Ker, one of the murderers of Rizzio. In 1574 Ker married the widow of John Knox, the Reformer. Nicol Milne was proprietor in Scott’s day.
8 See, however, facsimile of Allan’s ‘Gala Day at Abbotsford’—a sepia sketch—in Scott Centenary Exhibition Catalogue.
9 In the possession of Captain Dennistoun of Golfhill. The picture has been frequently on exhibition, and frequently engraved.
10 See ‘Memoir of Mrs. Hemans’ and her beautiful poem on ‘The Funeral-Day of Sir Walter Scott.’
11 See ‘Memoir and Correspondence of Susan Ferrier,’ edited by J. A. Doyle, for account of her visits to Ashestiel and Abbotsford.
12 ‘Domestic Manners and Private Life of Sir Walter Scott,’ first published 1834; reprinted 1882.
13 Of other Abbotsford visitors, mention may be made of Skene of Rubislaw, a friend of long standing; Sir David Brewster, who lived at Allerly, on the Gattonside bank of the Tweed; William Scrope, author of ‘Days and Nights of Salmon Fishing on the Tweed,’ who leased the Pavilion, ‘and lived on terms of affectionate intimacy with Scott’; G. P. R. James, the novelist, who rented Maxpoffle, near Bowden; Thomas Hamilton, Lockhart’s tenant at Chiefswood; Lord Cockburn, a frequent guest; J. M. W. Turner, R.A., and a host of artists who found their way at all seasons to Abbotsford. Of celebrated visitors after Scott’s day, there were Queen Victoria in 1867; George Eliot in 1845; Charles Dickens, John Ruskin, Edward FitzGerald, William Howitt, Oliver Wendell Holmes, R. L. Stevenson, with men and women of note from every land.
14 Dickens, however, had a somewhat similar experience, though not, of course, to the like extent.
15 The Burke and Hare murders were recent.
16 A reissue of the Poetry, with biographical prefaces, and a uniform reprint of the Novels, each introduced by an account of the hints on which it had been founded, and illustrated throughout by historical and antiquarian annotations.
17 Scott resided for a month in the Casa Bernini. In 1882 the Earl of Haddington unveiled a marble tablet in commemoration of the visit, when the venerable Duc de Salmonetta, with whom Sir Walter travelled in Italy, was present and took part in the proceedings.
18 As all the world knows, Scott stood indebted in 1826, on the Ballantyne-Constable crash, for no less a sum than £120,000, and a further £10,000 raised on Abbotsford with the view of averting the disaster. He determined to give every man his own. ‘If my life is spared, nobody shall lose a penny by me,’ he said, ‘and this right hand shall work it all off.’ Between 1826 and 1832 the debt was diminished by £66,000, an average of £11,000 a year. Against the remaining £54,000, a sum of £22,000 was received for his life insurance, and a generous advance from Cadell enabled his executors to settle in full with the Ballantyne creditors. By 1847 the loan was reduced to one-half, and the mortgage on the lands to £8,500. On May 11, 1847, Lockhart writes to Croker: ‘I have finally settled all our Sir Walter’s affairs. There remained debt secured on the lands, £8,500; to Cadell, £16,000; and sundries, £1,000. I have taken the £1,000 on myself, and Cadell obliterates the £24,500 on condition of getting the whole remaining copyright of Scott’s works, and also of the Life.’ At the time of the failure Scott surrendered his Collection at Abbotsford to his creditors; but so pleased were they with his fair and honourable response to their claims that they requested him to accept the furniture, plate, paintings, library, and museum, as a mark of sympathy and appreciation of his conduct. He valued his Collection at £10,000, and left it in his will to his eldest son, burdened to the extent of £5,000, for division among his younger children. In order to effect this, the second Sir Walter would have been obliged to disperse the Collection but for a subscription raised among a number of Scott’s admirers to purchase the Abbotsford Collection and hold it in trust for the public and the family. This trust is vested in the Dean and Council of the Faculty of Advocates, who are empowered to leave the Collection in the charge and keeping of Scott’s representatives at Abbotsford, or, should occasion arise, to remove it to some other building. The copyrights purchased by Cadell in 1847 were sold in 1851 by private bargain for £27,000 to Messrs. Adam and Charles Black, the publishers of the present volume. Messrs. Black’s editions of Scott’s works may, therefore, be trusted to contain the exact text as left in the ‘Magnum Opus,’ the MSS. of which are still in their possession.
19 Scott was an intense favourite with the Darnickers, who playfully dubbed him ‘Duke of Darnick.’
20 Mr. Lang’s ‘Life of Lockhart’ gives the date as July 14; the month is probably a printer’s error, however. At Dryburgh the date is June 14; but the Cambusnethan Records read June 12.
21 There is no foundation for the fanciful etymology of the name Lockhart, quasi Lock-heart (purely post facto). There were Locards in Scotland long before 1330.
22 Yet we find Lockhart, at the Jedburgh circuit of 1823, ‘pleading,’ so Scott says, ‘for a clansman of mine (Rob Scott), who, having sustained an affront from two men on the road home from Earlston Fair, nobly waylaid and murdered them both, single-handed.’ Lockhart lost his case, and his client was hanged.
23 Carlyle, curiously, had a fondness for the same verses, and was frequently quoting them.
24 ‘Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk’—the name was, of course, borrowed from Scott’s ‘Paul’s Letters’ (see vol. ii. for Abbotsford)—is seldom read nowadays, and there has been no new edition for years. Still, it is a faithful, if pungent, picture of the period, and, notwithstanding a certain ill odour, really contains far more good than evil. There was no first edition, the first actual publication being called the second edition. Why, would be difficult to say.
25 Some of Lockhart’s own best work was done at Chiefswood—e.g., ‘Valerius,’ a romance of the times of Trajan; ‘Adam Blair’—a Scottish ‘Scarlet Letter’; and several of his Spanish Ballads.
26 It may be noted here that while Lockhart ‘regarded his son-in-law’s conversion to Romanism as a grief and a humiliation, nevertheless, the nobleness of his nature, and the deep regard he always felt for his virtues, prevailed without an effort.’—Life of Hope Scott.
27 Miss Jobson appears to have been a young lady of great beauty. When George IV. came to Edinburgh, she was one of the maids of honour at Holyrood. She was Sir Adam Ferguson’s niece, and it was he who practically arranged the match. Following her marriage, she and her husband lived for a time at Lochore (purchased in 1813 by her father, a prosperous Dundee merchant). Sir Walter Scott himself was often there. Reference is made in ‘The Abbot’ to Ballingry Kirk. After 1832 Lochore was let to tenants, and in 1867 was sold for £60,000 to the Lochore Coal Company, in whose hands it still remains.
28 A friend who knew her writes: ‘Lady Scott was exceedingly sensitive and reserved. She hardly ever mentioned her husband’s name after his death. She was very kind-hearted, but rarely expressed her feelings. She was very fond of children. She lived a quiet and retired life, interesting herself much in politics, and could talk and argue well on the subject. She was clever and well read. She would never speak of Abbotsford.’
29 ‘I have the liveliest impression of that good, honest Scotch face and character, though never in contact with the young man but once.’—Thomas Carlyle.
30 The entries in the ‘Journal’ show this strongly,—his resignation to God’s will, and thankfulness for blessings.
31 In 1868 Gladstone urged Mr. Hope Scott to produce an abridged version of Lockhart, ignorant, apparently, of Lockhart’s own Abridgment. And in 1871 Hope Scott asks leave to dedicate a reprint of it to Gladstone as ‘one among those who think that Scott still deserves to be remembered, not as an author only, but as a noble and vigorous man.’
32 In addition to Abbotsford, Mr. Hope Scott owned the estate of Dorlin, on Loch Shiel; the Villa Madona, Hyères, South France; and property in County Mayo.
33 Mrs. Maxwell Scott has taken a deep interest in all the affairs of Abbotsford. Literary in her leanings, quite a number of volumes have come from her pen: ‘The Making of Abbotsford, and Incidents in Scottish History’; ‘Abbotsford and its Treasures’; ‘The Tragedy of Fotheringay’; ‘Life of Henry Schomberg Kerr, Sailor and Jesuit’; ‘Joan of Arc,’ and many articles besides, with the Prefaces to the ‘Melrose’ edition of the Novels.
34 See the Abbotsford Library Catalogue, a handsome quarto, edited by John G. Cochrane for the Maitland and Bannatyne Clubs, 1838.
35 The slogan of the Scotts of Buccleuch—‘A Bellenden!’ from Bellendean, near the head of the Borthwick Water, in Roxburghshire. The windows show the shields of eight families of the clan.
36 Sandyknowe appears to be the correct designation of the tower. In most books on Scott it is generally referred to as Smailholm Tower. Smailholm, however, had another Keep of that name (now demolished) close to the village. Many old records and maps read Sandeknow, etc., and local usage confirms this. Scott himself liked to speak of Sandyknowe.