by John Buchan
On Saturdays and on the happy days which closed the legal sessions Scott did not dress in his usual black, but under his gown wore a green jacket and corduroys. Peter Mathieson was waiting with the carriage in the Parliament Close, and before dinner the Sheriff was in his sheriffdom.
III
Scott was not now the man he had been; in his own phrase he had reached “the other side of the hill.” He moved more stiffly, and he had twinges of rheumatism from the constant wettings of the old days. Though he could still ride long distances on Sybil Grey and walk five or six miles at a stretch, he had no longer that abounding zest for action which at Ashestiel had made him daily scour the hills. He had become more of a home-keeper, and he told Lord Montagu, as proof of advancing age, that he had taken a liking to cats, which he had aforetime detested, and a fancy for gardening, an art which he had hitherto despised. He liked to potter about among his tenants, and to supervise his new buildings, and to arrange and catalogue his collections. But this growing sedentary habit did not impair the gusto of his mind. He had still the ardour and the wide horizons of youth. “The years which have gone by,” he wrote to Southey as late as 1824, “have found me ... tossing my ball and driving my hoop, a grey-headed schoolboy.”
[An Abbotsford morning]
The main routine of his life was as fixed at Abbotsford as at Ashestiel and in Edinburgh. The pillar of it was the late breakfast between nine and ten. Before that he had completed the whole or the greater part of his day’s work; after it he could see to his property and entertain his friends. His custom was to let his immediate task simmer in his mind for an hour before he rose, which meant that he could work quickly when he sat down to his desk. He wrote, as I have said, with intense concentration, and was not in the least put out by the interruption of dogs or human beings. Indeed his even temper could be ruffled by two things only — the meddling with his pen or the maltreatment of a book. The labours of those morning hours were not only in creative literature. He had a large post-bag and made a point of answering every letter without delay. Many of the communications he received were merely vexatious — the manuscript novels and poems of budding authors who sought his patronage, and requests for introductions and prefaces and pecuniary help. But some were welcome grist to the mill. Antiquaries sent him curious pieces of lore; a Tweeddale shepherd wrote to him about fairies; readers up and down the land contributed anecdotes of odd incidents and characters, or ghost stories, or fragments of Jacobite tradition. And there might be epistles from old friends, Skene or Morritt, or Mrs Hughes of Uffington, or Lady Louisa Stuart, letters which were joyfully reserved for reading aloud to the family.
The breakfast-room, like the library, was encumbered with dogs — Maida the deerhound; Hamlet the black greyhound; Finette, Lady Scott’s spaniel; Ourisque, a Highland terrier from Kintail; a motley of dandies named after the cruet-stand — Pepper, Mustard, Ketchup and so forth; as well as the cat Hinse of Hinsfeldt. Scott’s morning garb was the famous green shooting-coat, grey corduroy breeches, stockings and heavy shoes. He was in the habit of making a leisurely meal, while he discussed the post and the plans for the day. He ate porridge and cream from a cogie with a silver-mounted horn spoon; then he would do good work on salmon, fresh or kippered, and on a home-cured ham, a pie, or a cold sheep’s head, and he would finish with oatcakes or slices of brown bread spread thick with butter. It was his chief meal of the day, and he had earned it, for he had three or four hours of hard labour behind him.
[The Abbotsford hunt]
The family was not often alone, for Abbotsford received as many guests as any nobleman’s house in the land. Many came on pilgrimage to see the great man in his home, and Scott in his modesty felt that their entertainment was part of the return which he owed to a public which had treated him so handsomely. There would be an occasional foreign prince or English grandee, taking Abbotsford as one of their houses of call, an intermediate stage between Alnwick and Dalkeith. There would be brother writers welcomed in the freemasonry of the craft; Edinburgh lawyers, notably the other Clerks of Court; and school friends and faraway kinsfolk. Generally there was a Tweeddale or Teviotdale laird, as often as not with wife and family, who at first mixed shyly with the London fashionables and the Edinburgh wits. But the geniality of the host dissolved all awkwardness. Abbotsford, even in its earlier stages, was a comfortable dwelling, and Scott, with unhappy memories of other houses, took care that there should be ample writing materials not only upon the library tables but in every bedroom. His wife used to accuse him of overwalking, overtalking and overfeeding his guests, and no doubt some who were more used to Mayfair than to the hills may have found their days too strenuous. But the talk was what they came for, and Scott dispensed it generously; it was the talk, varied cunningly to suit every taste, which, in Lockhart’s phrase, made them all “equally happy with him, with themselves, and with each other.”
Expeditions were the order of the day. The anglers in the party, such as Sir Humphry Davy, would set off under Charlie Purdie’s guidance for Lord Somerville’s reach of the Tweed. The others, mounted on shelties, would thread the green rides of the young plantations, ascend the Eildons, and drop down on Melrose and Dryburgh, or, turning westward, explore Ettrick and Yarrow. Sometimes there would be a coursing of hares on the uplands between Tweed and Yarrow, when the unwary floundered in well-heads and peat-haggs. The ladies used to drive in a sociable and join the rest in a picnic luncheon at some famous spot like the birchen bower of Newark. Now and then a day was given up to the river, when the party would feast by the waterside on fresh-caught salmon, boiled in their broo, and at night there would be a “burning of the water,” when Scott, though he could no longer wield a spear, took the helm of a boat or held a torch. When he walked in the neighbourhood of Abbotsford he was generally bare-headed, but on an expedition the old white hat would appear, exchanged in rough weather for a sealskin cap. One unfailing companion was a massive stick, called Major Weir after the warlock, because of its necromantic powers of disappearance.
There were certain high days and holy days observed at Abbotsford — the football match on the Carter Haugh, the “kirn” or harvest-home, when the neighbourhood danced to John of Skye’s bagpipes, and above all the Abbotsford Hunt. This last was held usually on 28th October, the young Walter’s birthday. It meant a day’s coursing on the moors around Cauldshiels loch, or on the Gala hills, and all the yeomen and gentry of the countryside attended. There followed a great dinner at Abbotsford, with Scott in the chair, and victuals fit for hungry men:—”a baron of beef, roasted, at the foot of the table, a salted round at the head, while tureens of hare soup, hotchpotch, and cockeyleekie extended down the centre, and such light articles as geese, turkeys, entire sucking pigs, a singed sheep’s head, and the unfailing haggis, were set forth by way of side dishes. Blackcock and moorfowl, bushels of snipe, black puddings, white puddings, and pyramids of pancakes formed the second course. Ale was the favourite beverage during dinner, but there was plenty of port and sherry for those whose stomachs they suited. The quaighs of Glenlivet were filled brimful, and tossed off as if they held water.” Thereafter toddy was made in huge bowls, the Ettrick Shepherd being the chief compounder, and the stories and the songs began and lasted till the stirrup-cup far on in the small hours. “How they all contrived to get home in safety,” says Lockhart, “Heaven only knows — but I never heard of any serious accident except upon one occasion, when James Hogg made a bet at starting that he would leap over his wall-eyed pony as she stood, and broke his nose in this experiment of ‘o’ervaulting ambition.’” One comely goodwife, far off among the hills, amused Sir Walter by telling him, the next time he passed her homestead after one of these jolly doings, what her husband’s first words were when he alighted at his own door—”Ailie, my woman, I’m ready for my bed — and oh, lass (he gallantly added) I wish I could sleep for a towmont, for there’s only ae thing in this warld worth living for, and that’s the Abbotsford hunt!”
[Scott�
��s talk]
The dining-room was still a tiny place and John of Skye had to pipe on the green outside. Scott was generally in high spirits at dinner, though he ate little; he had no fixed seat at table, but would drop into any place vacant. The company did not sit long when the cloth was drawn, but joined the ladies in the library or the drawing-room, where about ten o’clock a light supper was served. Sometimes they danced reels, and on most evenings there was music, when Adam Ferguson would sing “Johnnie Cope” and Anne or Sophia “Kenmure’s on and awa’.” Scott’s talk at Abbotsford was, by general agreement, better than his Edinburgh performances, for he was in better health and could let his fancy “run its ain rigg.” Stories, reminiscences, happy sayings were varied with discourses on books, when, as he quoted some favourite passage, his voice would swell and his face light up. Here are two pictures of him in this mood. First Lockhart: —
In the course of conversation he happened to quote a few lines from one of the old Border ballads, and, looking round, I was quite astonished with the changes which seemed to have passed over every feature in his countenance. His eyes seemed no longer to glance quick and grey from beneath his impending brows, but were fixed in their expanded eyelids with a sober, solemn lustre. His mouth (the muscles about which are at all times wonderfully expressive), instead of its usual language of mirth or benevolence or shrewdness, was filled with a sad and peculiar earnestness. The whole face was tinged with a glow which showed its lines in new energy and transparence, and the thin hair parting backward displayed in tenfold majesty his Shakespearian pile of forehead.
Five years later we have Adolphus: —
The hair upon his forehead was quite grey, but his face, which was healthy and sanguine, and the hair about it, which had still a strong reddish tinge, contrasted rather than harmonized with the sleek, silvery locks above, a contrast which might seem rather suited to a jovial and humorous than to a pathetic expression. But the features were equally capable of both. The form and hue of the eyes (for the benefit of minute physiognomists it should be noted that the pupils contained some small specks of brown) were wonderfully calculated for showing great varieties of emotion. Their mournful aspect was extremely earnest and affecting; and, when he told some dismal and mysterious story, they had a doubtful, melancholy, exploring look, which appealed irresistibly to the hearer’s imagination. Occasionally, when he spoke of something very audacious and eccentric, they would dilate and light up with a tragi-comic, harebrained expression, quite peculiar to himself; one might see in it a whole chapter of Coeur-de-Lion and the Clerk of Copmanhurst. Never, perhaps, did a man go through all the gradations of laughter with such complete enjoyment, or a countenanace so radiant. The first dawn of a humorous thought would show itself sometimes, as he sat silent, by an involuntary lengthening of the upper lip, followed by a shy sidelong glance at his neighbours, indescribably whimsical, and seeming to ask from their looks whether the spark of drollery should be suppressed or allowed to blaze out. In the full tide of mirth he did indeed “laugh the heart’s laugh,” like Walpole, but it was not boisterous and overpowering, nor did it check the course of his words; he could go on telling or descanting while his lungs did “crow like chanticleer,” his syllables, in the struggle, growing more emphatic, his accent more strongly Scotch, and his voice plaintive with excess of merriment.
Apart from his writing and his entertaining Scott had many duties to fill his time. He sat regularly in the Selkirk sheriff-court, and had to have a legal section in the Abbotsford library. He had his farms in his own hand, but he cared more for his trees than for a good field of oats; he was always at work in his nurseries and plantations, planting and thinning, waiting for the day when a hoodie crow should build in an oak which he himself had sown. He went much about among his country neighbours, attended the dinners of the Forest Club, and was now and then a guest at a burgh feast in Selkirk, or at a banquet of the Galashiels weavers, when John of Skye piped to them and he himself sang “Tarry ‘Oo.”
Scott was by far the most popular figure on the Border. “All who knew him intimately loved him,” said James Hogg, who spoke for the hill glens, “nay, many of them almost worshipped him.... He was the only one I ever knew whom no man, either poor or rich, held at ill-will.” And he has a story of his wife which beautifully illustrates the spell which Scott laid on simple hearts. Once when he had been dining with the Hoggs at Mount Benger, he took up a little daughter, kissed her, and, laying his hand on her head, said, “God Almighty bless you, my dear child.” Hogg found his wife in tears and asked what ailed her. “Oh,” she cried, “I thought if he had just done the same to them all, I do not know what in the world I would not have given.”
The servants, indoors and outdoors, were like members of one family, and if Scott knew one thing better than another it was the heart of the old-fashioned servingman. He made their affairs his own, gave presents to their families, and, if one were overtaken by the wayside after a kirn, would himself wheel him to some shelter where he could sleep off his potations. Peter Mathieson, the coachman, was a Presbyterian of the old rock, and Scott’s favourite after-dinner walk was to the bowling green, where he could hear Peter’s evening psalmody. Dalgleish, the butler, was another stalwart; and there was Robert Hogg, too, the head shepherd, who did not greatly admire his famous brother of Ettrick, and John of Skye, who was a hedger and ditcher when he was not piping, and the footman, John Nicholson, whose education Scott supervised, and a long string of foresters. But the true “laird’s man” was Tom Purdie. Tom treated Scott and his fame as his own property. He was annoyed when Adam Ferguson was knighted, for he said, “it will take some of the shine out of us;” when Scott once observed that it was going to be a fine spring for the trees, Tom added that it would be “a grand season for our buiks too.” He used complete freedom with his master, and had often to be cajoled or argued into agreement with a plan. He was factotum out of doors and Scott’s “Sunday poney” when he was fatigued: indoors he was librarian, and his horny hands treated the precious volumes with delicacy and reverence. Every Sunday evening he appeared after dinner to drink long life to the laird and the lady.
The brute creatures shared in the same intimacy. Scott had an extraordinary attraction for every kind of dog, as his Abbotsford following showed. Carlyle has a story of a small cocker spaniel in Edinburgh, which had a nose for insincerity in human beings and was never wrong. Whenever it saw Scott in the street the proud little fellow would frisk round him and fawn at his feet. And there were other animals than dogs. There was a hen that would not be separated from him, and Sophia’s donkeys, when they saw him, trotted to the paling “to have a crack with the laird,” and a little black pig tried to attach itself to his retinue.
There was nothing slack-lipped in Scott’s geniality. He exacted a full day’s work from his servants and willingly received it. His friendliness encouraged confidence but not presumption, for every man knew that there was lightning slumbering behind the kindly grey eyes. His hospitality had its limits and he could show the door very fast to impertinent intruders; there was about him, says Lockhart “in perfection, when he chose to exert it, the power of civil rejection.” What he possessed was a quick conscience towards his fellows, especially towards the poor, and his letters show how assiduously he reflected on the problems of poverty. He discussed with Morritt the English poor law system, rejoiced that Scotland was less infested with ale-houses, and proposed a tax on manufacturers based on the number of hands they employed, the proceeds of which should go to the maintenance of the “manufacturing poor.” He believed in giving employment, not charity, and in the winter of 1816 made tasks for thirty labourers at Abbotsford on piece-work. He criticized acutely the Edinburgh system of employment on public works, where the wages paid were below the normal rate. Charity, he held, should be reserved for emergencies, and then no man gave more freely. In the snow-storm and floods of the spring of 1820, he sent money to Will Laidlaw. “Do not let the poor bodies want for a £5, and even
a £10, more or less.” He had the sound feudal notion that property was a trust, involving more duties than rights. The country children might go nutting in his beloved woods, though they destroyed his hazels. Firewood he would not give away, but he sold it cheaply, 1820 and put the proceeds into a fund to provide free doctoring for the cottagers. Nothing could induce him to close a customary track though it came very near his lawn, and he would never permit a trespass warning to be set up. “Round the house,” he told Basil Hall, “there is a set of walks set apart and kept private for the ladies — but over all the rest of my land any one may run as he likes. I please myself with the reflection that many people of taste may be indulging their fancies in these grounds, and I often recollect how much of Burns’s inspiration was probably due to his having near him the woods of Ballochmyle to ramble through at his will when he was a ragged callant.”