REMOVAL TO ABBOTSFORD, AND LIFE THERE.
In May, 1812, Scott having now at last obtained the salary of the
Clerkship of Session, the work of which he had for more than five
years discharged without pay, indulged himself in realizing his
favourite dream of buying a "mountain farm" at Abbotsford,--five miles
lower down the Tweed than his cottage at Ashestiel, which was now
again claimed by the family of Russell,--and migrated thither with his
household goods. The children long remembered the leave-taking as one
of pure grief, for the villagers were much attached both to Scott and
to his wife, who had made herself greatly beloved by her untiring
goodness to the sick among her poor neighbours. But Scott himself
describes the migration as a scene in which their neighbours found no
small share of amusement. "Our flitting and removal from Ashestiel
baffled all description; we had twenty-five cartloads of the veriest
trash in nature, besides dogs, pigs, ponies, poultry, cows, calves,
bare-headed wenches, and bare-breeched boys."[25]
To another friend Scott wrote that the neighbours had "been much
delighted with the procession of my furniture, in which old swords,
bows, targets, and lances, made a very conspicuous show. A family of
turkeys was accommodated within the helmet of some _preux chevalier_
of ancient border fame; and the very cows, for aught I know, were
bearing banners and muskets. I assure your ladyship that this caravan
attended by a dozen of ragged rosy peasant children, carrying
fishing-rods and spears, and leading ponies, greyhounds, and spaniels,
would, as it crossed the Tweed, have furnished no bad subject for the
pencil, and really reminded me of one of the gipsy groups of Callot
upon their march."[26]
The place thus bought for 4000_l._,--half of which, according to Scott's
bad and sanguine habit, was borrowed from his brother, and half raised on
the security of a poem at the moment of sale wholly unwritten, and not
completed even when he removed to Abbotsford--"Rokeby"--became only too
much of an idol for the rest of Scott's life. Mr. Lockhart admits that
before the crash came he had invested 29,000_l._ in the purchase of land
alone. But at this time only the kernel of the subsequent estate was
bought, in the shape of a hundred acres or rather more, part of which ran
along the shores of the Tweed--"a beautiful river flowing broad and bright
over a bed of milk-white pebbles, unless here and there where it darkened
into a deep pool, overhung as yet only by birches and alders." There was
also a poor farm-house, a staring barn, and a pond so dirty that it had
hitherto given the name of "Clarty Hole" to the place itself. Scott
renamed the place from the adjoining ford which was just above the
confluence of the Gala with the Tweed. He chose the name of Abbotsford
because the land had formerly all belonged to the Abbots of Melrose,--the
ruin of whose beautiful abbey was visible from many parts of the little
property. On the other side of the river the old British barrier called
"the Catrail" was full in view. As yet the place was not planted,--the
only effort made in this direction by its former owner, Dr. Douglas,
having been a long narrow stripe of firs, which Scott used to compare to a
black hair-comb, and which gave the name of "The Doctor's Redding-Kame" to
the stretch of woods of which it is still the central line. Such was the
place which he made it the too great delight of the remainder of his life
to increase and beautify, by spending on it a good deal more than he had
earned, and that too in times when he should have earned a good deal more
than he ought to have thought even for a moment of spending. The cottage
grew to a mansion, and the mansion to a castle. The farm by the Tweed made
him long for a farm by the Cauldshiel's loch, and the farm by the
Cauldshiel's loch for Thomas the Rhymer's Glen; and as, at every step in
the ladder, his means of buying were really increasing--though they were
so cruelly discounted and forestalled by this growing land-hunger,--Scott
never realized into what troubles he was carefully running himself.
Of his life at Abbotsford at a later period when his building was
greatly enlarged, and his children grown up, we have a brilliant
picture from the pen of Mr. Lockhart. And though it does not belong to
his first years at Abbotsford, I cannot do better than include it here
as conveying probably better than anything I could elsewhere find, the
charm of that ideal life which lured Scott on from one project to
another in that scheme of castle-building, in relation to which he
confused so dangerously the world of dreams with the harder world of
wages, capital, interest, and rent.
"I remember saying to William Allan one morning, as the
whole party mustered before the porch after breakfast, 'A
faithful sketch of what you at this moment see would be more
interesting a hundred years hence than the grandest
so-called historical picture that you will ever exhibit in
Somerset House;' and my friend agreed with me so cordially
that I often wondered afterwards he had not attempted to
realize the suggestion. The subject ought, however, to have
been treated conjointly by him (or Wilkie) and Edwin
Landseer.
"It was a clear, bright September morning, with a sharpness
in the air that doubled the animating influence of the
sunshine, and all was in readiness for a grand coursing
match on Newark Hill. The only guest who had chalked out
other sport for himself was the staunchest of anglers, Mr.
Rose; but he too was there on his _shelty_, armed with his
salmon-rod and landing-net, and attended by his humorous
squire, Hinves, and Charlie Purdie, a brother of Tom, in
those days the most celebrated fisherman of the district.
This little group of Waltonians, bound for Lord Somerville's
preserve, remained lounging about to witness the start of
the main cavalcade. Sir Walter, mounted on Sybil, was
marshalling the order of procession with a huge
hunting-whip; and among a dozen frolicsome youths and
maidens, who seemed disposed to laugh at all discipline,
appeared, each on horseback, each as eager as the youngest
sportsman in the troop, Sir Humphry Davy, Dr. Wollaston, and
the patriarch of Scottish _belles lettres_, Henry Mackenzie.
The Man of Feeling, however, was persuaded with some
difficulty to resign his steed for the present to his
faithful negro follower, and to join Lady Scott in the
sociable, until we should reach the ground of our _battue_.
Laidlaw, on a long-tailed, wiry Highlander, yclept Hoddin
Grey, which carried him nimbly and stoutly, although his
feet almost touched the ground as he sat, was the adjutant.
But the most picturesque figure was the illustrious inventor
of the safety-lamp. He had come for his favourite sport of
angling, and had been practising it successfully with Rose,
his travelling-companion, for two or three days preceding
this, but he had not prepared for coursing fields, and had
left Charlie Purdie's troop for Sir Walter's on a sudden
thought; and his fisherman's costume--a brown hat with
flexible brim, surrounded with line upon line, and
innumerable fly-hooks, jack-boots worthy of a Dutch
smuggler, and a fustian surtout dabbled with the blood of
salmon,--made a fine contrast with the smart jackets, white
cord breeches, and well-polished jockey-boots of the less
distinguished cavaliers about him. Dr. Wollaston was in
black, and, with his noble, serene dignity of countenance,
might have passed for a sporting archbishop. Mr. Mackenzie,
at this time in the seventy-sixth year of his age, with a
white hat turned up with green, green spectacles, green
jacket, and long brown leather gaiters buttoned upon his
nether anatomy, wore a dog-whistle round his neck, and had
all over the air of as resolute a devotee as the gay captain
of Huntly Burn. Tom Purdie and his subalterns had preceded
us by a few hours with all the greyhounds that could be
collected at Abbotsford, Darnick, and Melrose; but the giant
Maida had remained as his master's orderly, and now
gambolled about Sibyl Grey, barking for mere joy, like a
spaniel puppy.
"The order of march had been all settled, and the sociable
was just getting under weigh, when _the Lady Anne_ broke
from the line, screaming with laughter, and exclaimed,
'Papa! papa! I know you could never think of going without
your pet.' Scott looked round, and I rather think there was
a blush as well as a smile upon his face, when he perceived
a little black pig frisking about his pony, and evidently a
self-elected addition to the party of the day. He tried to
look stern, and cracked his whip at the creature, but was in
a moment obliged to join in the general cheers. Poor piggy
soon found a strap round his neck, and was dragged into the
background. Scott, watching the retreat, repeated with mock
pathos the first verse of an old pastoral song:--
"What will I do gin my hoggie die?
My joy, my pride, my hoggie!
My only beast, I had nae mae,
And wow! but I was vogie!"
The cheers were redoubled, and the squadron moved on. This
pig had taken, nobody could tell how, a most sentimental
attachment to Scott, and was constantly urging its
pretension to be admitted a regular member of his _tail_,
along with the greyhounds and terriers; but indeed I
remember him suffering another summer under the same sort of
pertinacity on the part of an affectionate hen. I leave the
explanation for philosophers; but such were the facts. I
have too much respect for the vulgarly calumniated donkey to
name him in the same category of pets with the pig and the
hen; but a year or two after this time, my wife used to
drive a couple of these animals in a little garden chair,
and whenever her father appeared at the door of our cottage,
we were sure to see Hannah More and Lady Morgan (as Anne
Scott had wickedly christened them) trotting from their
pasture to lay their noses over the paling, and, as
Washington Irving says of the old white-haired hedger with
the Parisian snuff-box, 'to have a pleasant crack wi' the
laird.'"[27]
Carlyle, in his criticism on Scott--a criticism which will hardly, I
think, stand the test of criticism in its turn, so greatly does he
overdo the reaction against the first excessive appreciation of his
genius--adds a contribution of his own to this charming idyll, in
reference to the natural fascination which Scott seemed to exert over
almost all dumb creatures. A little Blenheim cocker, "one of the
smallest, beautifullest, and tiniest of lapdogs," with which Carlyle
was well acquainted, and which was also one of the shyest of dogs,
that would crouch towards his mistress and draw back "with angry
timidity" if any one did but look at him admiringly, once met in the
street "a tall, singular, busy-looking man," who halted by. The dog
ran towards him and began "fawning, frisking, licking at his feet;"
and every time he saw Sir Walter afterwards, in Edinburgh, he
repeated his demonstration of delight. Thus discriminating was this
fastidious Blenheim cocker even in the busy streets of Edinburgh.
And Scott's attraction for dumb animals was only a lesser form of his
attraction for all who were in any way dependent on him, especially
his own servants and labourers. The story of his demeanour towards
them is one of the most touching ever written. "Sir Walter speaks to
every man as if they were blood-relations" was the common _formula_ in
which this demeanour was described. Take this illustration. There was
a little hunchbacked tailor, named William Goodfellow, living on his
property (but who at Abbotsford was termed Robin Goodfellow). This
tailor was employed to make the curtains for the new library, and had
been very proud of his work, but fell ill soon afterwards, and Sir
Walter was unremitting in his attention to him. "I can never forget,"
says Mr. Lockhart, "the evening on which the poor tailor died. When
Scott entered the hovel, he found everything silent, and inferred from
the looks of the good women in attendance that the patient had fallen
asleep, and that they feared his sleep was the final one. He murmured
some syllables of kind regret: at the sound of his voice the dying
tailor unclosed his eyes, and eagerly and wistfully sat up, clasping
his hands with an expression of rapturous gratefulness and devotion
that, in the midst of deformity, disease, pain, and wretchedness, was
at once beautiful and sublime. He cried with a loud voice, 'The Lord
bless and reward you!' and expired with the effort."[28] Still more
striking is the account of his relation with Tom Purdie, the
wide-mouthed, under-sized, broad-shouldered, square-made,
thin-flanked woodsman, so well known afterwards by all Scott's friends
as he waited for his master in his green shooting-jacket, white hat,
and drab trousers. Scott first made Tom Purdie's acquaintance in his
capacity as judge, the man being brought before him for poaching, at
the time that Scott was living at Ashestiel. Tom gave so touching an
account of his circumstances--work scarce--wife and children in
want--grouse abundant--and his account of himself was so fresh and
even humorous, that Scott let him off the penalty, and made him his
shepherd. He discharged these duties so faithfully that he came to be
his master's forester and factotum, and indeed one of his best
friends, though a little disposed to tyrannize over Scott in his own
fashion. A visitor describes him as unpacking a box of new
importations for his master "as if he had been sorting some toys for a
restless child." But after Sir Walter had lost the bodily strength
requisite for riding, and was too melancholy for ordinary
conversation, Tom Purdie's shoulder was his great stay in wandering
through his woods, for with him he felt that he might either speak or
be silent at his pleasure. "What a blessing there is," Scott wrote in
his diary at that time, "in a fellow like Tom, whom no familiarity can
spoil, whom you may scold and praise and joke with, knowing the
quality of the man is unalterable in his love and reverence to his
master." After Scott's failure, Mr. Lockhart writes: "Before I leave
this period, I must note how greatly I admired the manner in which all
his dependents appeared to have met the reverse of his fortunes--a
reverse which inferred very considerable alteration in the
circumstances of every one of them. The butler, instead of being the
easy chief of a large establishment, was now doing half the work of
the house at probably half his former wages. Old Peter, who had been
for five and twenty years a dignified coachman, was now ploughman in
ordinary, only putting his horses to the carriage upon high and rare
occasions; and so on with all the rest that remained of the ancient
train. And all, to my view, seemed happier than they had ever done
before."[29] The illustration of this true confidence between Scott
and his servants and labourers might be extended to almost any length.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 25: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, iv. 6.]
[Footnote 26: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, iv. 3.]
[Footnote 27: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, vi. 238--242.]
[Footnote 28: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, vii. 218.]
[Footnote 29: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, ix. 170.]