Wat's eldest son; distinguished by the early favour of James VI.
In his youth, engaging in a foray on the lands of Sir Gideon Murray
of Elibank, and being taken prisoner, Murray offers him choice between
being hanged, or marrying the plainest of his daughters. The contract
of marriage, written on the parchment of a drum, is still in possession
of the family of Harden. [52]
This is Lockhart's reading of the circumstances, and I give his own
statement of them in the note below. But his assumption of the extreme
plainness of the young lady, and of the absolute worldly-mindedness
of the mother, are both examples of the modern manner of reading
traditions, out of which some amusement may be gathered by looking only
at them on the grotesque side, and interpreting that grotesqueness
ungenerously. There may, indeed, be farther ground than Lockhart
has thought it worth while to state for his colour of the facts;
but all that can be justly gathered from those he has told is that,
Sir Gideon having determined the death of his troublesome neighbour,
Lady Murray interfered to save his life; and could not more forcibly
touch her husband's purpose than by reminding him that hostility
might be better ended in alliance than in death.
The sincere and careful affection which Sir William of Harden
afterwards shows to all his children by the Maid of Elibank, and his
naming one of them after her father, induce me still farther to trust
in the fairer reading of the tradition. I should, indeed, have been
disposed to attach some weight, on the side of the vulgar story, to
the curiously religious tendencies in Sir William's children, which
seem to point to some condition of feeling in the mother, arising out
of despised life. Women are made nobly religious by the possession
of extreme beauty, and morbidly so by distressed consciousness of the
want of it; but there is no reason for insisting on this probability,
since both the Christian and surname of Sir Gideon Murray point to
his connection with the party in Scotland which was at this time
made strong in battle by religious faith, and melancholy in peace by
religious passion.
III. Walter Scott, first Laird of Raeburn; third son of Sir William
and this enforced bride of Elibank. They had four sons altogether; the
eldest, William, becomes the second Sir William of Harden; their father
settled the lands of Raeburn upon Walter; and of Highchester on his
second son, Gideon, named, after the rough father-in-law, of Elibank.
Now about this time (1657), George Fox comes into Scotland; boasting
that "as he first set his feet upon Scottish ground he felt the seed
of grace to sparkle about him like innumerable sparks of fire." And he
forthwith succeeds in making Quakers of Gideon, Walter, and Walter's
wife. This is too much for Sir William of Harden, the eldest brother,
who not only remains a staunch Jacobite, but obtains order from the
Privy Council of Scotland to imprison his brother and brother's wife;
that they may hold no further converse with Quakers, and also to
"separate and take away their children, being two sons and a daughter,
from their family and education, and to breed them in some convenient
place." Which is accordingly done; and poor Walter, who had found
pleasantly conversible Quakers in the Tolbooth of Edinburgh, is
sent to Jedburgh, with strict orders to the Jedburgh magistrates to
keep Quakers out of his way. The children are sent to an orthodox
school by Sir William; and of the daughter I find nothing further;
but the two sons both became good scholars, and were so effectually
cured of Quakerism, that the elder (I don't find his Christian name),
just as he came of age, was killed in a duel with Pringle of Crichton,
fought with swords in a field near Selkirk--ever since called, from the
Raeburn's death, "the Raeburn meadow-spot;"--and the younger, Walter,
who then became "Tutor of Raeburn," i.e., guardian to his infant
nephew, intrigued in the cause of the exiled Stewarts till he had lost
all he had in the world--ran a narrow risk of being hanged--was saved
by the interference of Anne, Duchess of Buccleugh--founded a Jacobite
club in Edinburgh, in which the conversation is said to have been
maintained in Latin--and wore his beard unclipped to his dying day,
vowing no razor should pass on it until the return of the Stewarts,
whence he held his Border name of "Beardie."
It is only when we remember how often this history must have dwelt
on Sir Walter's mind that we can understand the tender subtlety of
design with which he has completed, even in the weary time of his
declining life, the almost eventless story of 'Redgauntlet,' and given,
as we shall presently see, in connection with it, the most complete,
though disguised, portion of his own biography.
IV. Beardie. I find no details of Beardie's life given by Scott,
but he was living at Leasudden when his landlord, Scott of Harden,
[53] living at Mertoun House, addressed to him the lines given in the
note to the introduction to the sixth canto of 'Marmion,' in which
Scott himself partly adopts the verses, writing from Mertoun House
to Richard Heber.
"For course of blood, our proverbs dream,
Is warmer than the mountain stream.
And thus my Christmas still I hold
Where my great-grandsire came of old, [54]
'With amber beard and flaxen hair,
And reverend apostolic air,
The feast and holytide to share,
And mix sobriety with wine,
And honest mirth with thoughts divine.'
Small thought was his, in after-time,
E'er to be hitched into a rhyme.
The simple sire could only boast
That he was loyal to his cost,
The banished race of kings revered,
And lost his land--but kept his beard,--"
"a mark of attachment," Scott adds in his note, "which I suppose had
been common during Cromwell's usurpation; for in Cowley's 'Cutter of
Coleman Street' one drunken cavalier upbraids another that when he was
not able to pay a barber, he affected to 'wear a beard for the King.'"
Observe, here, that you must always be on your guard, in reading
Scott's notes or private letters, against his way of kindly laughing
at what he honours more deeply than he likes to confess. The house
in which Beardie died was still standing when Sir Walter wrote his
autobiography, (1808), at the north-east entrance of the churchyard
of Kelso.
He left three sons. Any that remain of the family of the elder are
long since settled in America (male heirs extinct). James Scott,
well known in India as one of the original settlers of Prince of Wales
Island, was a son of the youngest, who died at Lasswade, in Midlothian
(first mention of Scott's Lasswade).
But of the second son, Scott's grandfather, we have to learn much.
V. Robert Scott of Sandy-Knowe, second son of Beardie. I cannot shorten
Scott's own account of the circumstances which determined his choice
of life.
"My grandfather was originally bred to the sea, but being shipwrecked
near Dundee in his trial voyage, he took such a sincere dislike to
that element, that he could not be persuaded to a second attempt. This
occasioned a quarrel between him and his father, who left him to shift
for himself. Robert was one of those active spirits to whom this was
no misfortune. He turned Whig upon the spot, and fairly abjured his
father's politics and his learned poverty. His chief and relative,
Mr. Scott of Harden, gave him a lease of the farm of Sandy-Knowe,
comprehending the rocks in the centre of which Smailholm or Sandy-Knowe
Tower is situated. He took for his shepherd an old man called Hogg,
who willingly lent him, out of respect to his family, his whole
savings, about £30, to stock the new farm. With this sum, which it
seems was at the time sufficient for the purpose, the master and
servant [55] set off to purchase a stock of sheep at Whitsun-tryste,
a fair held on a hill near Wooler, in Northumberland. The old shepherd
went carefully from drove to drove, till he found a hirsel likely
to answer their purpose, and then returned to tell his master to
come up and conclude the bargain. But what was his surprise to see
him galloping a mettled hunter about the race-course, and to find he
had expended the whole stock in this extraordinary purchase! Moses'
bargain of green spectacles did not strike more dismay into the
Vicar of Wakefield's family than my grandfather's rashness into the
poor old shepherd. The thing, however, was irretrievable, and they
returned without the sheep. In the course of a few days, however, my
grandfather, who was one of the best horsemen of his time, attended
John Scott of Harden's hounds on this same horse, and displayed him
to such advantage that he sold him for double the original price. The
farm was now stocked in earnest, and the rest of my grandfather's
career was that of successful industry. He was one of the first
who were active in the cattle trade, afterwards carried to such an
extent between the Highlands of Scotland and the leading counties in
England, and by his droving transactions acquired a considerable sum
of money. He was a man of middle stature, extremely active, quick,
keen, and fiery in his temper, stubbornly honest, and so distinguished
for his skill in country matters that he was the general referee in
all points of dispute which occurred in the neighbourhood. His birth
being admitted as gentle, gave him access to the best society in the
county, and his dexterity in country sports, particularly hunting,
made him an acceptable companion in the field as well as at the table."
Thus, then, between Auld Wat of Harden, and Scott's grandfather,
we have four generations, numbering approximately a hundred and
fifty years, from 1580 to 1730, [56] and in that time we have the
great change in national manners from stealing cattle to breeding
and selling them, which at first might seem a change in the way of
gradually increasing honesty. But observe that this first cattle-dealer
of our line is "stubbornly honest," a quality which it would be unsafe
to calculate upon in any dealer of our own days.
Do you suppose, then, that this honesty was a sudden and momentary
virtue--a lightning flash of probity between the two darknesses of
Auld Wat's thieving and modern cozening?
Not so. That open thieving had no dishonesty in it whatsoever. Far
the contrary. Of all conceivable ways of getting a living, except by
actual digging of the ground, this is precisely the honestest. All
other gentlemanly professions but this have taint of dishonesty in
them. Even the best--the physician's--involves temptation to many forms
of cozening. How many second-rate mediciners have lived, think you,
on prescriptions of bread pills and rose-coloured water?--how many,
even of leading physicians, owe all their success to skill unaided
by pretence? Of clergymen, how many preach wholly what they know to
be true without fear of their congregations? Of lawyers, of authors,
of painters, what need we speak? These all, so far as they try to
please the mob for their living, are true cozeners,--unsound in the
very heart's core. But Wat of Harden, setting my farm on fire, and
driving off my cattle, is no rogue. An enemy, yes, and a spoiler;
but no more a rogue than the rock eagles. And Robert the first
cattle-dealer's honesty is directly inherited from his race, and
notable as a virtue, not in opposition to their character, but to
ours. For men become dishonest by occult trade, not by open rapine.
There are, nevertheless, some very definite faults in our pastoral
Robert of Sandy-Knowe, which Sir Walter himself inherits and recognizes
in his own temper, and which were in him severely punished. Of the
rash investment of the poor shepherd's fortune, we shall presently
hear what Sir Walter thought. Robert's graver fault, the turning Whig
to displease his father, is especially to be remembered in connection
with Sir Walter's frequent warnings against the sacrifice to momentary
passion of what ought to be the fixed principles of youth. It has
not been enough noticed that the design of his first and greatest
story is to exhibit and reprehend, while it tenderly indicates the
many grounds for forgiving, the change of political temper under
circumstances of personal irritation.
But in the virtues of Robert Scott, far outnumbering his failings,
and above all in this absolute honesty and his contentment in the joy
of country life, all the noblest roots of his grandson's character
found their happy hold.
Note every syllable of the description of him given in the introduction
to the third canto of 'Marmion:'
"Still, with vain fondness, could I trace
Anew each kind familiar face
That brightened at our evening fire;
From the thatched mansion's grey-haired sire,
Wise without learning, plain, and good,
And sprung of Scotland's gentler blood;
Whose eye in age, quick, clear, and keen,
Showed what in youth its glance had been;
Whose doom discording neighbours sought,
Content with equity unbought,
To him, the venerable priest,
Our frequent and familiar guest."
Note, I say, every word of this. The faces "brightened at the evening
fire,"--not a patent stove; fancy the difference in effect on the
imagination, in the dark long nights of a Scottish winter, between
the flickering shadows of firelight, and utter gloom of a room warmed
by a close stove!
"The thatched mansion's."--The coolest roof in summer, warmest in
winter. Among the various mischievous things done in France, apparently
by the orders of Napoleon III., but in reality by the foolish nation
uttering itself through his passive voice, (he being all his days
only a feeble Pan's pipe, or Charon's boatswain's whistle, instead of
a true king,) the substitution of tiles for thatch on the cottages
of Picardy was one of the most barbarous. It was to prevent fire,
forsooth! and all the while the poor peasants could not afford candles,
except to drip about over their church floors. See above, 6, 17.
"Wise without learning."--By no means able, this Border rider, to
state how many different arrangements may be made of the letters
in the word Chillianwallah. He contrived to exist, and educate his
grandson to come to something, without that information.
"Plain, and good."--Consider the value there is in that virtue of
plainness--legibility, shall we say?--in the letters of character. A
clear-printed man, readable at a glance. There are such things as
illuminated letters of character also,--beautifully unreadable;
but this legibility in the head of a family is greatly precious.
"And sprung of Scotland's gentler blood."--I am not sure if this is
merely an ordinary expression of family pride, or whether, which I
rather think, Scott means to mark distinctly the literal gentleness
and softening of character in his grandfather, and in the Lowland
Scottish shepherd of his day, as opposed to the still fiery temper
of the Highland clans--the blood being equally pure, but the race
altogether softer and more Saxon. Even Auld Wat was fair-haired,
and Beardie has "amber beard and flaxen hair."
"Whose doom discording neighbours sought,
Content with equity unbought."--
Here you have the exactly right and wise condition of the legal
profession.
All good judging, and all good preaching, must be given gratis. Look
back to what I have incidentally said of lawyers and clergy,
as professional--that is to say, as living by their judgment,
and sermons. You will perhaps now be able to receive my conclusive
statement, that all such professional sale of justice and mercy is a
deadly sin. A man may sell the work of his hands, but not his equity,
nor his piety. Let him live by his spade; and if his neighbours find
him wise enough to decide a dispute between them, or if he is in
modesty and simplicity able to give them a piece of pious advice,
let him do so, in Heaven's name, but not take a fee for it.
Finally, Robert Scott is a cattle-dealer, yet a gentleman, giving us
the exact balance of right between the pride which refuses a simple
employment, and the baseness which makes that simple employment
disgraceful, because dishonest. Being wholly upright, he can sell
cattle, yet not disgrace his lineage. We shall return presently to
his house; but must first complete, so as to get our range of view
within due limits, the sketch of the entire ancestral line.
VI. Walter Scott, of George's Square, Edinburgh, Scott's father,
born 1729.
He was the eldest son of Robert of Sandy-Knowe, and had three brothers
and a sister, namely, Captain Robert Scott, in East India Service;
Thomas Scott, cattle-dealer, following his father's business; a
younger brother who died early, (also) in East India Service; and the
sister Janet, whose part in Scott's education was no less constant,
and perhaps more influential, than even his mother's. Scott's regard
for one of his Indian uncles, and his regret for the other's death,
are both traceable in the development of the character of Colonel
Mannering; but of his uncle Thomas, and his aunt Jessie, there is
much more to be learned and thought on.
The cattle-dealer followed his father's business prosperously; was
twice married--first to Miss Raeburn, and then to Miss Rutherford
of Knowsouth--and retired, in his old age, upon a handsome
independence. Lockhart, visiting him with Sir Walter, two years
before the old man's death, (he being then eighty-eight years old,)
thus describes him:
"I thought him about the most venerable figure I had ever set my eyes
on,--tall and erect, with long flowing tresses of the most silvery
whiteness, and stockings rolled up over his knees, after the fashion of
three generations back. He sat reading his Bible without spectacles,
and did not, for a moment, perceive that any one had entered his
room; but on recognizing his nephew he rose with cordial alacrity,
kissing him on both cheeks, and exclaiming, 'God bless thee, Walter,
my man; thou hast risen to be great, but thou wast always good.' His
remarks were lively and sagacious, and delivered with a touch of that
humour which seems to have been shared by most of the family. He had
the air and manners of an ancient gentleman, and must in his day have
been eminently handsome."
Next read Sir Walter Scott's entry made in his copy of the Haliburton
Memorials:--
"The said Thomas Scott died at Monklaw, near Jedburgh, at two of
the clock, 27th January, 1823, in the 90th year of his life, and
fully possessed of all his faculties. He read till nearly the year
before his death; and being a great musician on the Scotch pipes,
had, when on his deathbed, a favourite tune played over to him by
his son James, that he might be sure he left him in full possession
of it. After hearing it, he hummed it over himself, and corrected
it in several of the notes. The air was that called 'Sour Plums in
Galashiels.' When barks and other tonics were given him during his
last illness, he privately spat them into his handkerchief, saying,
as he had lived all his life without taking doctors' drugs, he wished
to die without doing so."
No occasion whatever for deathbed repentances, you perceive, on the
part of this old gentleman; no particular care even for the disposition
of his handsome independence; but here is a bequest of which one must
see one's son in full possession--here is a thing to be well looked
after, before setting out for heaven, that the tune of "Sour Plums
in Galashiels" may still be played on earth in an incorrupt manner,
and no damnable French or English variations intruded upon the solemn
and authentic melody thereof. His views on the subject of Materia
Medica are also greatly to be respected.
"I saw more than once," Lockhart goes on, "this respectable man's
sister (Scott's aunt Janet), who had married her cousin Walter,
Laird of Raeburn, thus adding a new link to the closeness of the
family connection. She also must have been, in her youth, remarkable
for personal attractions; as it was, she dwells on my memory as the
perfect picture of an old Scotch lady, with a great deal of simple
dignity in her bearing, but with the softest eye and the sweetest
voice, and a charm of meekness and gentleness about every look
and expression. She spoke her native language pure and undiluted,
but without the slightest tincture of that vulgarity which now seems
almost unavoidable in the oral use of a dialect so long banished from
courts, and which has not been avoided by any modern writer who has
ventured to introduce it, with the exception of Scott, and I may add,
speaking generally, of Burns. Lady Raeburn, as she was universally
styled, may be numbered with those friends of early days whom her
nephew has alluded to in one of his prefaces as preserving what we
may fancy to have been the old Scotch of Holyrood."
To this aunt, to his grandmother, his mother, and to the noble
and most wise Rector of the High School of Edinburgh, Dr. Adam,
Scott owed the essential part of his "education," which began in this
manner. At eighteen months old his lameness came on, from sudden cold,
bad air, and other such causes. His mother's father, Dr. Rutherford,
advised sending him to the country; he is sent to his grandfather's at
Sandy-Knowe, where he first becomes conscious of life, and where his
grandmother and aunt Janet beautifully instruct, but partly spoil
him. When he is eight years old, he returns to, and remains in,
his father's house at George's Square. And now note the following
sentence:--
"I felt the change from being a single indulged brat, to becoming
a member of a large family, very severely; for under the gentle
government of my kind grandmother, who was meekness itself, and of my
aunt, who, though of a higher temper, was exceedingly attached to me,
I had acquired a degree of license which could not be permitted in a
large family. I had sense enough, however, to bend my temper to my new
circumstances; but such was the agony which I internally experienced,
that I have guarded against nothing more, in the education of my own
family, than against their acquiring habits of self-willed caprice
and domination."
The indulgence, however, no less than the subsequent discipline,
had been indeed altogether wholesome for the boy, he being of the
noble temper which is the better for having its way. The essential
virtue of the training he had in his grandfather's and father's house,
and his aunt Jessie's at Kelso, I will trace further in next letter.