FROM CARTLEYHOLE TO ABBOTSFORD
It is scarcely necessary to recall that Scott on both sides of his
house was connected with the Border Country--the 'bold bad Border'
of a day happily long dead. He would have been a reiver himself,
more than likely, and one of its nameless bards to boot, had he
lived before the Border felt the subdued spirit of modern times.
In the many-sided story of the Border, however, with its rare
wealth of romanticism, Scott found his life-work. So that it was
the Border which made him the force he is in the world of letters.
No Borderer--no Scotsman, indeed, has taken truer and firmer hold
of his countrymen. A descendant of Wat of Harden, linked to the
best blood of the Border, and with every phase of his life redolent
of the Border feeling, history has had no difficulty in claiming
Sir Walter Scott as the most representative Border man the world
has seen. He was not born in the Border Country, but practically
all his life was spent there. His environment throughout was
that of a Borderer. He belongs, to be sure, to every country.
Like Shakespeare and Burns, Scott is one of the cosmopolitan
heroes of literature, whose works are as widely cherished abroad
as at home. Not a summer in the Border Country--the true 'Scott
Country'--but is evidence of his universality. Scott gloried in the
heritage that came to him from generations of Border ancestors,
their cattle-lifting propensities notwithstanding. To belong to
the Border--to Tweedside, to use his pet phrase--was never a
superficial boast. It was because his most personal interests were
bound up therein, and because he clung with a whole-hearted passion
to the Border and to the Tweed, that these are to-day the most
familiar of Scottish names. 'It is part of my creed,' he writes in
an early letter to Patrick Murray, 'that the Tweed and Teviot yield
to none in the world; nor do I fear that even in your eyes, which
have been feasted on classic ground, they will greatly sink in
comparison with the Tiber or Po!' Calais was not more indelible on
Mary's heart than the Tweed was on Scott's. All the joyful strength
of his life, says Ruskin, was spent in the Tweed valley. He came to
the Border a sickly, delicate child, between his third and fourth
year, and for threescore years and one he seldom left it for any
lengthened interval. Edinburgh was his school, and his office, and
the arena of much of his professional career. At a later period it
was crowded with many painful memories. But he was happiest, even
amid the most crushing sorrows of his life, when within earshot of
the Tweed. There was not a blither or sunnier boyhood than Scott's
at Rosebank, where even then he was 'making' himself, and dreaming
of the days that were to be. At Ashestiel, the birthplace of the
most popular poetry of the century before Byron blazed upon the
literary horizon, his life was singularly untrammelled. Ashestiel,
from being off the beaten track perhaps, seems to have lost favour
somewhat with the Scott student. At any rate, it is not the shrine
it should be, although in several respects it is more interesting
to lovers of Scott than even Abbotsford itself. As for Abbotsford,
may we not say that it is at once the proudest, and the most
stimulating, and the saddest memorial ever associated with a man
of letters? All these, comprising the three periods of Scott's
life--Rosebank, Ashestiel, Abbotsford--lie as close to the Tweed as
can be--none of them more than a few hundred paces from it at the
outset. And when the great Borderer's task was accomplished, where
more fitly could he have rested than with the river of his love and
of his dreams singing ceaseless requiem around his last low bed?
It will be interesting to have a glimpse of Tweedside just as
Scott appeared upon the scene. Since his day the valley in many of
its aspects has not been without change. Even the remote uplands,
long untouched by outside influences, have not escaped the modern
spirit. The river must needs remain _in statu quo_, but the
contrast between Sir Walter's Tweedside and ours is considerable.
A century of commerce and agriculture has wrought marvels on the
once bare and featureless and uncultivated banks of the Tweed. And
none would have rejoiced at its present picturesque and prosperous
condition more than Scott himself. Of the valley as it was a
hundred years since, some early travellers give their impressions.
There is the following from a Londoner's point of view, for
instance--a somewhat sombre picture, true enough, however, of _the
upper reaches_ at the time: 'About four in the afternoon we were
obliged to proceed on our journey to Moffat, a market town, where
we were informed we should meet with good lodging, which made us
ride on the more briskly, but notwithstanding all our speed,
we had such terrible stony ways and tedious miles, that when we
thought we had been near the place, we met a Scotchman, who told
us we were not got half way; this put us almost into the spleen,
for we could see nothing about us but barren mountains on the right
and the River Tweed on the left, which, running thro' the stones
and rocks with a terrible noise, seemed to us like the croaking of
a Raven, or the tone of a Screitch Owle to a dying man, so we were
forced to ride on by guesse, knowing not a step of the way, and
meeting none to direct us, till at last, coming up a hill, we spyed
some waggons going over another mountain before us, and resolving
to press somebody into our service, we rode on as fast as we could
to overtake them, and then we were told we had still twelve long
miles to Moffat.'
Dorothy Wordsworth's diary (1803) of a day by the Tweed below
Peebles--_the middle portion_ of the stream--is a pleasanter
memory: 'We had a day's journey before us along the banks of the
Tweed, a name which has been sweet to my ears almost as far back
as I can remember. After the first mile or two our road was seldom
far from the river, which flowed in gentleness, though perhaps
never silent; the hills on either side high, and sometimes stony,
but excellent pasture for sheep.... In one very sweet part of the
vale a gate crossed the road, which was opened by an old woman
who lived in a cottage close to it. I said to her, "You live in a
very pretty place!" "Yes," she replied, "the water of Tweed is a
bonny water." The lines of the hills are flowing and beautiful,
the reaches of the vale long; in some places appear the remains
of a forest, in others you will see as lovely a combination of
forms as any traveller who goes in search of the picturesque need
desire, and yet perhaps without a single tree; or, at least, if
trees there are, they shall be very few.' And writing about the
same time the Rev. Richard Warner--afterwards the author of a work
on the Waverley Novels--describes _the lower half_ of the river
between Berwick and Kelso: 'The country around Berwick, though
swelling into hills and sinking into vales, has neither beauty nor
variety, the one being uniform and lumpish, the other wide and
unwooded. A naked surface everywhere presents itself, unadorned
with those indispensable features in agreeable landscape, lofty
trees and spreading shrubs. The river Tweed, also, disappointed our
expectations of picturesque beauty. Associated as the name of this
river had hitherto been in our minds with poetical and pastoral
ideas, we were prepared to admire its fringed banks and sacred
shades, the haunt of many a water-nymph and sylvan deity; but alas!
no solemn woods lifted their lofty heads over these celebrated
waters. All was original nakedness.... The scenery is more animated
and cheerful in the neighbourhood of Kelso, where wood is more
frequent. Tweed's velvet banks were here and there spotted with
little clumps of trees, presenting a fairer subject for tender and
elegiac poetry than it had before done.'
At Scott's day the Tweed valley, in what are now its most luxuriant
reaches, exhibited a markedly naked and treeless character. From
Abbotsford to Norham Castle the scenery was of the openest. Here
and there 'ancestral oaks' still clumped themselves about the
great houses, with perhaps some further attempt at decorating the
landscape. But that was rare enough. Landlords had not learned
the art, not to speak of the wisdom, of tree-planting. It is only
within the past hundred years that planting has become frequent,
and the modern beauty of Tweedside emerged into being. It is said
that Scott was one of the first to popularize the planting spirit.
His operations at Abbotsford certainly induced the neighbouring
proprietors to follow suit. Scott of Gala, and the lairds of
Ravenswood, Drygrange, Cowdenknowes, Gladswood, Bemersyde, Mertoun,
Eildon Hall, and Floors, all took their lead, more or less, from
Abbotsford. Arboriculture was Scott's most passionate hobby. At
least two long articles were penned by him on the subject, and
he practised the art with extraordinary diligence and foresight.
Of botany he knew little, but of trees everything. As we shall
see, not the least important part of Abbotsford's creation was
planning and perfecting that wondrous wealth of woodland--a very
network about the place, on whose full growth his eyes, alas! were
not destined to feast. 'Somebody,' he said, 'will look at them,
however, though I question that they will have the same pleasure
in gazing on the full-grown oaks that I have had in nursing the
saplings.'
A fourth impression of Tweedside comes to us from the pages of
Lockhart. We are dealing now with _the site of Abbotsford_ as it
was about the year 1811. Scott was tenant of Ashestiel. Here he had
spent eight of the pleasantest years of his life. But his lease
was out, and the laird himself--his cousin, General Russell--was
returning from India.
In casting about for a new abode, Scott seems at first to have
thought of Broadmeadows, on the Yarrow, then in the market, a
compact little domain which would have suited him well. Lockhart's
one regret was that Scott did not purchase Broadmeadows. Here,
surrounded by large landed proprietors, instead of a few
bonnet-lairds, he would certainly have escaped the Abbotsford
'yerd-hunger,' and changed, possibly, the whole of his career.
But the Broadmeadows Scott might have been very different from
_our Sir Walter_. Of Newark, also, close by, the scene of the
'Lay,' he had some fancy, and would fain have fitted it up as a
residence. The ancestral home of Harden itself was proposed to
him, and indeed offered, and he would have removed thither but
for its inconvenience for shrieval duties. After all, however,
there was uppermost in Scott's mind the wish to have a house and
land of his own--to be 'laird of the cairn and the scaur,' as in
the case of Broadmeadows, or 'a Tweedside laird' at best, and
later on, perhaps, to 'play the grand old feudal lord again.'
Lockhart assures us that Scott was really aiming at higher game.
His ambition was to found a new Border family, and to become head
of a new branch of the Scotts, already so dominant. And did he
not succeed? It is not strictly true to say that he failed. He
realized his ambition, and he died in that belief. He built his
'castle,' as he playfully calls it, with more grandeur about it
than he had, mayhap, dreamed of. Honours of the highest were heaped
upon him. And at his death, at any rate, there was a prospect of
his line being continued. Only one ugly shadow stood between--his
monetary troubles. It is easy to say at this time of day that
Scott was defeated in his most cherished hopes. He was defeated,
as hundreds are, through the accidents of history. But in himself
he was surely a noble success, and at his passing most of his
plans had prospered. Scott towered so much above his fellows in
intellectual strength, and he had such perfect faith in himself
and the power of his own transcendent capabilities, that it is
scarcely fair to pass censure on the ambitions and ideals which
governed him, and the steady purpose that made him one of the
truest and best of men--one of the world's greatest men. There is
no occasion to bemoan Scott's career, no need to reflect on its
'might-have-beens.' His course he had mapped out for himself, and
it was the only course destined to give us Scott as he wished to
be, and as the generations should best remember him.
About to quit Ashestiel, therefore, his attention was directed to a
small farm-holding not far distant, on the south bank of the Tweed,
some two miles from Galashiels, and about three from Melrose. Scott
knew the spot well. It had 'long been one of peculiar interest
for him,' from the incident mentioned in the foregoing chapter.
By name Newarthaugh--a name almost forgotten in the story of
Abbotsford--it was also known as Cartleyhole, or Cartlawhole, and
Cartlihole, according to the Melrose Session Records, in which
parish it was situated. The place was tenanted for a time by
Taits and Dicksons. Then it seems to have passed into the family
of Walter Turnbull, schoolmaster of Melrose, who disposed of it,
in the year 1797, to Dr. Robert Douglas, the enterprising and
philanthropic minister of Galashiels. Why Dr. Douglas purchased
this property nobody has been able to understand. It lay outside
his parish, and was never regarded as a desirable or dignified
possession. A shrewd man of business, however, he may, like Scott,
have judged it capable of results, speculating accordingly. He
had never lived at Cartleyhole. The place was laid out in parks,
and the house, of which, curiously, Scott speaks in a recently
recovered letter as 'new and substantial,' was in occupation. The
surroundings were certainly in a deplorably neglected condition.
The sole attempt at embellishment had been limited to a strip
of firs so long and so narrow that Scott likened it to a black
hair-comb. 'The farm,' according to Lockhart, 'consisted of a
rich meadow or haugh along the banks of the river, and about a
hundred acres of undulated ground behind, all in a neglected state,
undrained, wretchedly enclosed, much of it covered with nothing
better than the native heath. The farm-house itself was small
and poor, with a common kailyard on one flank and a staring barn
on the other; while in front appeared a filthy pond covered with
ducks and duckweed, from which the whole tenement had derived the
unharmonious designation of Clarty Hole.'[3] A local reminiscence
emphasizes Lockhart's description: 'The first time I saw Cartley
Hole, or, as it is more appropriately called, Clarty Hole, which
you are probably aware is the Scotch term for dirty, was in 1807 or
1808. I was on my first holiday visit to an uncle in Darnick. It
was a low-built, one-story house, standing in what was literally
a _hole_, and it had anything but a prepossessing appearance.
It may have had attics, but of this I am not quite sure. It had
nothing to recommend it as a site for a stately mansion, save its
proximity to the Tweed. The scenery around was bare, and did not
boast of a single natural beauty.' But to Scott's far-seeing eye
matters were not so hopeless. There were, he felt, possibilities
in the place. Moreover, it was his wish to _create_, as far as he
could, the home that was to be his own. Cartleyhole offered in
many respects an ideal site for the purpose he had in prospect. It
lay at almost the centre of the Border district. All around were
the grand historic and romantic associations of the Border, the
subjects in which Scott revelled. Melrose Abbey, the most graceful
and picturesque ruin in Scotland, already so celebrated in his
verse, was visible from many points in the neighbourhood. Dryburgh
was not far distant. Yonder Eildon's triple height, sacred to so
much of the supernatural in Border lore, reared his grey crown
to the skies. There, the Tweed, 'a beautiful river even here,'
flowed in front, broad and bright over a bed of milk-white pebbles.
Selkirk, his Sheriff's headquarters, was within easy reach. He was
interested in the Catrail, or Picts' Work Ditch, on the opposite
hillside, so often alluded to in his letters to Ellis; and on his
own ground were fields, and mounds, and standing-stones, whose
placenames recalled the struggle of 1526. A Roman road running down
from the Eildons to a ford on the Tweed, long used by the Abbots,
the erstwhile lords of the locality, furnished a new designation
for the acres of hungry haugh-land--'as poor and bare as Sir John
Falstaff's regiment'--upon which was destined to be reared the most
venerated, and probably the most visited shrine in the kingdom.
[Illustration: THE ABBEY, MELROSE]
'If thou would'st view fair Melrose aright,
Go visit it by the pale moonlight;
For the gay beams of lightsome day
Gild, but to flout, the ruins gray.
When the broken arches are black in night,
And each shafted oriel glimmers white;
When the cold light's uncertain shower
Streams on the ruined central tower;
When buttress and buttress alternately
Seem framed of ebon and ivory;
When silver edges the imagery
And the scrolls that teach thee to live and die;
When distant Tweed is heard to rave,
And the owlet to hoot o'er the dead man's grave,
Then go--but go alone the while--
Then view St. David's ruined pile;
And, home returning, soothly swear
Was never scene so sad and fair!'
On May 12, 1811, we find Scott writing to James Ballantyne: 'I have
resolved to purchase a piece of ground sufficient for a cottage
and a few fields. There are two pieces, either of which would suit
me, but both would make a very desirable property indeed, and
could be had for between £7,000 and £8,000--or either separate
for about half the sum. I have serious thoughts of one or both,
and must have recourse to my pen to make the matter easy.' By the
end of June one of the pieces passed into his hands for the sum
mentioned--£4,000, half of which, according to Scott's bad and
sanguine habit, he borrowed from his brother John, raising the
remainder on the security of 'Rokeby,' as yet unwritten. The letter
to Dr. Douglas acknowledging his receipt for the last instalment of
the purchase-money has been preserved: 'I received the discharged
bill safe, which puts an end to our relation of debtor and creditor:
'Now the gowd's thine,
And the land's mine.
I am glad you have been satisfied with my manner of transacting
business, and have equal reason at least to thank you for your
kindly accommodation as to time and manner of payment. In short,
I hope our temporary connection forms a happy contradiction to
the proverb, "I lent my money to my friend; I lost my money and
my friend." A figure of note in his day, Dr. Douglas was born at
the manse of Kenmore, in 1747, and in his twenty-third year was
presented to the parish of Galashiels, where he laboured till his
death in 1820. He has been styled the Father of Galashiels. Much
of his money--he inherited a fortune from his brother, a Captain
in the Indian Army--was lent without stint to the manufacturers of
that period, who were struggling out of their old-time condition as
country weavers, and endeavouring to establish the woollen trade
as a staple industry in the town. Galashiels, when Abbotsford came
into being, was a mere thatched hamlet. Then it could boast of
not more than a dozen slated houses. To-day there is a population
of over 13,000. Dr. Douglas's friendship with Scott continued for
many years. He was the 'reverend and unbigoted' clergyman to whom
Scott addressed 'Paul's Letter' on Religion in France, and was
himself the author of a carefully compiled essay on 'Agriculture
in the Counties of Roxburgh and Selkirk.' Perhaps most interesting
to recall, it was to Dr. Douglas that Mrs. Cockburn of Fairnalee
penned her epistle wherein mention is made of Scott in his seventh
year as 'the most extraordinary genius of a boy I ever saw.'
Four-and-thirty years lay between that evening and the purchase
of Cartleyhole--'a poor thing, but mine own.' Scott had taken a
further, and as yet the most important, step up the ladder of his
ambition. Things were going well with him, and it was a joy to
send such welcome news to his brother-in-law on the other side
of the world:[4] 'This is the greatest incident which has lately
taken place in our domestic concerns, and I assure you we are not a
little proud of being greeted as Laird and Lady of Abbotsford.'
THE CREATION OF ABBOTSFORD