Illustrations of the Autobiographical Fragment. --
Edinburgh. -- Sandy-Knowe. -- Bath. -- Prestonpans.
1771-1778.
Sir Walter Scott opens his brief account of his ancestry with a
playful allusion to a trait of national character, which has, time out
of mind, furnished merriment to the neighbors of the Scotch; but the
zeal of pedigree was deeply rooted in himself, and he would have been
the last to treat it with serious disparagement. It has often been
exhibited under circumstances sufficiently grotesque; but it has lent
strength to many a good impulse, sustained hope and self-respect under
many a difficulty and distress, armed heart and nerve to many a bold
and resolute struggle for independence; and prompted also many a
generous act of assistance, which under its influence alone could have
been accepted without any feeling of degradation.
He speaks modestly of his own descent; for, while none of his
predecessors had ever sunk below the situation and character of a
gentleman, he had but to go three or four generations back, and
thence, as far as they could be followed, either on the paternal or
maternal side, they were to be found moving in the highest ranks of
our baronage. When he fitted up, in his later years, the beautiful
hall of Abbotsford, he was careful to have the armorial bearings of
his forefathers blazoned in due order on the compartments of its roof;
and there are few in Scotland, under the titled nobility, who could
trace their blood to so many stocks of historical distinction.
In {p.052} the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, and Notes to The
Lay of the Last Minstrel, the reader will find sundry notices of the
"Bauld Rutherfords that were sae stout," and the Swintons of Swinton
in Berwickshire, the two nearest houses on the maternal side. An
illustrious old warrior of the latter family, Sir John Swinton,
extolled by Froissart, is the hero of the dramatic sketch, Halidon
Hill; and it is not to be omitted, that through the Swintons Sir
Walter Scott could trace himself to William Alexander, Earl of
Stirling, the poet and dramatist.[35] His respect for the worthy
barons of Newmains and Dryburgh, of whom, in right of his father's
mother, he was the representative, and in whose venerable sepulchre
his remains now rest, was testified by his Memorials of the
Haliburtons, a small volume printed (for private circulation only) in
the year 1820. His own male ancestors of the family of Harden, whose
lineage is traced by Douglas in his Baronage of Scotland back to the
middle of the fourteenth century, when they branched off from the
great blood of Buccleuch, have been so largely celebrated in his
various writings, that I might perhaps content myself with a general
reference to those pages, their only imperishable monument. The
antique splendor of the ducal house itself has been dignified to all
Europe by the pen of its remote descendant; but it may be doubted
whether his genius could have been adequately developed, had he not
attracted, at an early and critical period, the kindly recognition and
support of the Buccleuchs.
[Footnote 35: On Sir Walter's copy of _Recreations with the
Muses, by William, Earl of Stirling_, 1637, there is the
following MS. note:--"Sir William Alexander, sixth Baron of
Menstrie, and first Earl of Stirling, the friend of Drummond
of Hawthornden and Ben Jonson, died in 1640. His eldest son,
William, Viscount Canada, died before his father, leaving one
son and three daughters by his wife, Lady Margaret Douglas,
eldest daughter of William, first Marquis of Douglas.
Margaret, the second of these daughters, married Sir Robert
Sinclair of Longformacus in the Merse, to whom she bore two
daughters, Anne and Jean. Jean Sinclair, the younger
daughter, married Sir John Swinton of Swinton; and Jean
Swinton, her eldest daughter, was the grandmother of the
proprietor of this volume."]
The race had been celebrated, however, long before his {p.053} day,
by a minstrel of its own; nor did he conceal his belief that he owed
much to the influence exerted over his juvenile mind by the rude but
enthusiastic clan-poetry of old _Satchells_ who describes himself _on
his title-page_ as
"Captain Walter Scot, an old Souldier and no Scholler,
And one that can write nane,
But just the Letters of his Name."
His True History of several honourable Families of the Right
Honourable Name of Scot, in the Shires of Roxburgh and Selkirk, and
others adjacent, gathered out of Ancient Chronicles, Histories, and
Traditions of our Fathers, includes, among other things, a string of
complimentary rhymes addressed to the first Laird of Raeburn; and the
copy which had belonged to that gentleman was in all likelihood about
the first book of verses that fell into the poet's hand.[36] How
continually its wild {p.054} and uncouth doggerel was on his lips to
his latest day all his familiars can testify; and the passages which
he quoted with the greatest zest were those commemorative of two
ancient worthies, both of whom had had to contend against physical
misfortune similar to his own. The former of these, according to
Satchells, was the immediate founder of the branch originally designed
of Sinton, afterwards of Harden:--
"It is four hundred winters past in order
Since that Buccleuch was Warden in the Border;
A son he had at that same tide,
Which was so lame could neither run nor ride.
John, this lame son, if my author speaks true,
He sent him to St. Mungo's in Glasgu,
Where he remained a scholar's time,
Then married a wife according to his mind....
And betwixt them twa was procreat
Headshaw, Askirk, SINTON, and Glack."
[Footnote 36: His family well remember the delight which he
expressed on receiving, in 1818, a copy of this first
edition, a small dark quarto of 1688, from his friend
Constable. He was breakfasting when the present was
delivered, and said, "This is indeed the resurrection of an
old ally--I mind _spelling_ these lines." He read aloud the
jingling epistle to his own great-great-grandfather, which,
like the rest, concludes with a broad hint, that as the
author had neither lands nor flocks--"no estate left except
his designation"--the more fortunate kinsman who enjoyed,
like Jason of old, a fair share of _fleeces_, might do worse
than bestow on him some of King James's _broad pieces_. On
rising from table, Sir Walter immediately wrote as follows on
the blank leaf opposite to poor Satchells' honest
title-page--
"I, Walter Scott of Abbotsford, a poor scholar, no soldier,
but a soldier's lover,
In the style of my namesake and kinsman do hereby discover,
That I have written the twenty-four letters twenty-four
million times over;
And to every true-born Scott I do wish as many golden pieces
As ever were hairs in Jason's and Medea's golden fleeces."
The rarity of the original edition of Satchells is such, that
the copy now at Abbotsford was the only one Mr. Constable had
ever seen--and no wonder, for the author's envoy is in these
words:--
"Begone, my book, stretch forth thy wings and fly
Amongst the nobles and gentility;
Thou'rt not to sell to scavengers and clowns,
But given to worthy persons of renown.
The number's few I've printed, in regard
My charges have been great, and I hope reward;
I caus'd not print many above twelve score,
And the printers are engaged that they shall print no more."]
But, if the scholarship of _John the Lamiter_ furnished his descendant
with many a mirthful allusion, a far greater favorite was the memory
of _William the Boltfoot_, who followed him in the sixth generation:--
"The Laird and Lady of Harden
Betwixt them procreat was a son
Called William Boltfoot of Harden."
The emphasis with which this next line was quoted I can never
forget:--
"_He did survive to be_ A MAN."
He was, in fact, one of the "prowest knights" of the whole
genealogy--a fearless horseman and expert spearman, renowned and
dreaded; and I suppose I have heard Sir Walter repeat a dozen times,
as he was dashing into the Tweed or Ettrick, "rolling red from brae to
brae," a stanza from what he called an old ballad, though it was most
likely one of his own early imitations:--
"To tak the foord he aye was first,
Unless the English loons were near;
Plunge vassal than, plunge horse and man,
Auld Boltfoot rides into the rear."
"From {p.055} childhood's earliest hour," says the poet in one of his
last Journals, "I have rebelled against external circumstances." How
largely the traditional famousness of the stalwart _Boltfoot_ may have
helped to develop this element of his character, I do not pretend to
say; but I cannot avoid regretting that Lord Byron had not discovered
such another "Deformed Transformed" among his own chivalrous
progenitors.
So long as Sir Walter retained his vigorous habits, he used to make an
autumnal excursion, with whatever friend happened to be his guest at
the time, to the tower of Harden, the _incunabula_ of his race. A more
picturesque scene for the fastness of a lineage of Border marauders
could not be conceived; and so much did he delight in it, remote and
inaccessible as its situation is, that, in the earlier part of his
life, he had nearly availed himself of his kinsman's permission to fit
up the dilapidated _peel_ for his summer residence. Harden (the ravine
of hares) is a deep, dark, and narrow glen, along which a little
mountain brook flows to join the river Borthwick, itself a tributary
of the Teviot. The castle is perched on the brink of the precipitous
bank, and from the ruinous windows you look down into the crows' nests
on the summits of the old mouldering elms, that have their roots on
the margin of the stream far below:--
"Where Bortha hoarse, that loads the meads with sand,
Rolls her red tide to Teviot's western strand,
Through slaty hills, whose sides are shagged with thorn,
Where springs in scattered tufts the dark-green corn,
Towers wood-girt Harden far above the vale,
And clouds of ravens o'er the turrets sail.
A hardy race who never shrunk from war,
The Scott, to rival realms a mighty bar,
Here fixed his mountain home;--a wide domain,
And rich the soil, had purple heath been grain;
But what the niggard ground of wealth denied,
From fields more bless'd his fearless arm supplied."[37]
[Footnote 37: Leyden, the author of these beautiful lines,
has borrowed, as _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_ did also,
from one of Satchells's primitive couplets--
"If heather-tops had been corn of the best,
Then Buccleugh mill had gotten a noble grist."]
It {p.056} was to this wild retreat that the Harden of The Lay of the
Last Minstrel, the Auld Wat of a hundred Border ditties, brought home,
in 1567, his beautiful bride, Mary Scott, "the Flower of Yarrow,"
whose grace and gentleness have lived in song along with the stern
virtues of her lord. She is said to have chiefly owed her celebrity to
the gratitude of an English captive, a beautiful child, whom she
rescued from the tender mercies of Wat's moss-troopers, on their
return from a foray into Cumberland. The youth grew up under her
protection, and is believed to have been the composer both of the
words and the music of many of the best old songs of the Border. As
Leyden says,
"His are the strains whose wandering echoes thrill
The shepherd lingering on the twilight hill,
When evening brings the merry folding hours,
And sun-eyed daisies close their winking flowers.
He lived o'er Yarrow's Flower to shed the tear,
To strew the holly leaves o'er Harden's bier;
But none was found above the minstrel's tomb,
Emblem of peace, to bid the daisy bloom.
He, nameless as the race from which he sprung,
Saved other names, and left his own unsung."
We are told that when the last bullock which Auld Wat had provided
from the English pastures was consumed, the Flower of Yarrow placed on
her table a dish containing a pair of clean spurs; a hint to the
company that they must bestir themselves for their next dinner. Sir
Walter adds, in a note to the Minstrelsy, "Upon one occasion when the
village herd was driving out the cattle to pasture, the old laird
heard him call loudly to drive out Harden's cow. 'Harden's _cow_!'
echoed the affronted chief; 'is it come to that pass? By my faith they
shall soon say Harden's _kye_' (cows). Accordingly, he sounded his
bugle, set out with his followers, and next day returned with _a bow
of kye, and a bassen'd_ (brindled) _bull_. On his return with this
gallant prey, he passed a very large haystack. It occurred to the
provident laird {p.057} that this would be extremely convenient to
fodder his new stock of cattle; but as no means of transporting it
were obvious, he was fain to take leave of it with the apostrophe, now
become proverbial--'_By my saul, had ye but four feet, ye should not
stand lang there._' In short, as Froissart says of a similar class of
feudal robbers, nothing came amiss to them that was not _too heavy or
too hot_."
Another striking chapter in the genealogical history belongs to the
marriage of Auld Wat's son and heir, afterwards Sir William Scott of
Harden, distinguished by the early favor of James VI., and severely
fined for his loyalty under the usurpation of Cromwell. The period of
this gentleman's youth was a very wild one in that district. The
Border clans still made war on each other occasionally, much in the
fashion of their forefathers; and the young and handsome heir of
Harden, engaging in a foray upon the lands of Sir Gideon Murray of
Elibank, treasurer-depute of Scotland, was overpowered by that baron's
retainers, and carried in shackles to his castle, now a heap of ruins,
on the banks of the Tweed. Elibank's "doomtree" extended its broad
arms close to the gates of his fortress, and the indignant laird was
on the point of desiring his prisoner to say a last prayer, when his
more considerate dame interposed milder counsels, suggesting that the
culprit was born to a good estate, and that they had three unmarried
daughters. Young Harden, not, it is said, without hesitation, agreed
to save his life by taking the plainest of the three off their hands,
and the contract of marriage, executed instantly on the parchment of a
drum, is still in the charter-chest of his noble representative.
Walter Scott, the third son of this couple, was the first Laird of
Raeburn, already alluded to as one of the patrons of Satchells. He
married Isabel Macdougal, daughter of Macdougal of Makerstoun--a
family of great antiquity and distinction in Roxburghshire, of whose
{p.058} blood, through various alliances, the poet had a large share
in his veins. Raeburn, though the son and brother of two steady
Cavaliers, and married into a family of the same political creed,
became a Whig, and at last a Quaker; and the reader will find, in one
of the notes to The Heart of Mid-Lothian, a singular account of the
persecution to which this backsliding exposed him at the hands of both
his own and his wife's relations. He was incarcerated (A. D. 1665),
first at Edinburgh and then at Jedburgh, by order of the Privy
Council--his children were forcibly taken from him, and a heavy sum
was levied on his estate yearly, for the purposes of their education
beyond the reach of his perilous influence. "It appears," says Sir
Walter, in a MS. memorandum now before me, "that the Laird of
Makerstoun, his brother-in-law, joined with Raeburn's own elder
brother, Harden, in this singular persecution, as it will now be
termed by Christians of all persuasions. It was observed by the people
that the male line of the second Sir William of Harden became extinct
in 1710, and that the representation of Makerstoun soon passed into
the female line. They assigned as a cause, that when the wife of
Raeburn found herself deprived of her husband, and refused permission
even to see her children, she pronounced a malediction on her
husband's brother as well as on her own, and prayed that a male of
their body might not inherit their property."
The MS. adds, "of the first Raeburn's two sons it may be observed
that, thanks to the discipline of the Privy Council, they were both
good scholars." Of these sons, Walter, the second, was the poet's
great-grandfather, the enthusiastic Jacobite of the autobiographical
fragment,--who is introduced,
"With amber beard and flaxen hair,
And reverend apostolic air,"
in the epistle prefixed to the sixth canto of Marmion. A good
{p.059} portrait of Bearded Wat, painted for his friend Pitcairn, was
presented by the Doctor's grandson, the Earl of Kellie, to the father
of Sir Walter. It is now at Abbotsford; and shows a considerable
resemblance to the poet. Some verses addressed to the original by his
kinsman Walter Scott of Harden are given in one of the Notes to
Marmion. The old gentleman himself is said to have written verses
occasionally, both English and Latin; but I never heard more than the
burden of a drinking-song--
"Barba crescat, barba crescat,
Donec carduus revirescat."[38]
[Footnote 38: Since this book was first published, I have
seen in print _A Poem on the Death of Master Walter Scott,
who died at Kelso, November 3, 1729_, written, it is said, by
Sir William Scott of Thirlestane, Bart., the male ancestor of
Lord Napier. It has these lines:--
"His converse breathed the Christian. On his tongue
The praises of religion ever hung;
Whence it appeared he did on solid ground
Commend the pleasures which himself had found....
His venerable mien and goodly air
Fix on our hearts impressions strong and fair.
Full seventy years had shed their silvery glow
Around his locks, and made his beard to grow;
That decent beard, which in becoming grace
Did spread a reverend honor on his face," etc.--(1838.)]
Scantily as the worthy Jacobite seems to have been provided with this
world's goods, he married the daughter of a gentleman of good
condition, "through whom," says the MS. memorandum already quoted,
"his descendants have inherited a connection with some honorable
branches of the _Slioch nan Diarmid_, or Clan of Campbell." To this
connection Sir Walter owed, as we shall see hereafter, many of those
early opportunities for studying the manners of the Highlanders, to
which the world are indebted for Waverley, Rob Roy, and The Lady of
the Lake.
Robert Scott, the son of Beardie, formed also an honorable alliance.
{p.060} His father-in-law, Thomas Haliburton,[39] the last but one of
the "good lairds of Newmains," entered his marriage as follows in the
domestic record, which Sir Walter's pious respect induced him to have
printed nearly a century afterwards:--"My second daughter Barbara is
married to Robert Scott, son to Walter Scott, uncle to Raeburn, upon
this sixteen day of July, 1728, at my house of Dryburgh, by Mr. James
Innes, minister of Mertoun, their mothers being cousings; may the
blessing of the Lord rest upon them, and make them comforts to each
other and to all their relations;" to which the editor of the
Memorials adds this note--"May God grant that the prayers of the
excellent persons who have passed away may avail for the benefit of
those who succeed them!--_Abbotsford_, Nov., 1824."
[Footnote 39: "From the genealogical deduction in the
Memorials, it appears that the Haliburtons of Newmains were
descended from and represented the ancient and once powerful
family of Haliburton of Mertoun, which became extinct in the
beginning of the eighteenth century. The first of this latter
family possessed the lands and barony of Mertoun by a charter
granted by Archibald, Earl of Douglas and Lord of Galloway
(one of those tremendous lords whose coronets counterpoised
the Scottish crown), to Henry de Haliburton, whom he
designates as his standard-bearer, on account of his service
to the earl in England. On this account the Haliburtons of
Mertoun and those of Newmains, in addition to the arms borne
by the Haliburtons of Dirleton (the ancient chiefs of that
once great and powerful, but now almost extinguished
name)--viz. _or_, on a bend _azure_, three mascles of the
first--gave the distinctive bearing of a buckle of the second
in the sinister canton. These arms still appear on various
old tombs in the abbeys of Melrose and Dryburgh, as well as
on their house at Dryburgh, which was built in 1572."--_MS.
Memorandum_, 1820. Sir Walter was served heir to these
Haliburtons soon after the date of this Memorandum, and
thenceforth quartered the arms above described with those of
his paternal family.]
I need scarcely remind the reader of the exquisite description of the
poet's grandfather, in the Introduction to the third canto of
Marmion--
----"the thatched mansion's gray-hair'd sire,
Wise without learning, plain and good,
And sprang of Scotland's gentler blood;
Whose {p.061} eye, in age quick, clear, and keen,
Showed what in youth its glance had been;
Whose doom discording neighbors sought,
Content with equity unbought."
In the Preface to Guy Mannering, we have an anecdote of Robert Scott
in his earlier days: "My grandfather, while riding over Charterhouse
Moor, then a very extensive common, fell suddenly among a large band
of gypsies, who were carousing in a hollow surrounded by bushes. They
instantly seized on his bridle with shouts of welcome, exclaiming that
they had often dined at his expense, and he must now stay and share
their cheer. My ancestor was a little alarmed, for he had more money
about his person than he cared to risk in such society. However, being
naturally a bold, lively spirited man, he entered into the humor of
the thing, and sat down to the feast, which consisted of all the
varieties of game, poultry, pigs, and so forth, that could be
collected by a wide and indiscriminate system of plunder. The dinner
was a very merry one, but my relative got a hint from some of the
older gypsies, just when 'the mirth and fun grew fast and furious,'
and mounting his horse accordingly, he took a French leave of his
entertainers." His grandson might have reported more than one scene of
the like sort in which he was himself engaged, while hunting the same
district, not in quest of foxes or of cattle sales, like the Goodman
of Sandy-Knowe, but of ballads for the Minstrelsy. Gypsy stories, as
we are told in the same Preface, were frequently in the mouth of the
old man when his face "brightened at the evening fire," in the days of
the poet's childhood. And he adds that, "as Dr. Johnson had a shadowy
recollection of Queen Anne as a stately lady in black, adorned with
diamonds," so his own memory was haunted with "a solemn remembrance of
a woman of more than female height, dressed in a long red cloak, who
once made her appearance beneath the thatched roof of Sandy-Knowe,
commenced acquaintance by {p.062} giving him an apple, and whom he
looked on, nevertheless, with as much awe as the future doctor, High
Church and Tory as he was doomed to be, could look upon the Queen."
This was Madge Gordon, granddaughter of Jean Gordon, the prototype of
Meg Merrilies.
Of Robert of Sandy-Knowe, also, there is a very tolerable portrait at
Abbotsford, and the likeness of the poet to his grandfather must have
forcibly struck every one who has seen it. Indeed, but for its wanting
some inches in elevation of forehead--(a considerable want, it must be
allowed)--the picture might be mistaken for one of Sir Walter Scott.
The keen, shrewd expression of the eye, and the remarkable length and
compression of the upper lip, bring him exactly before me as he
appeared when entering with all the zeal of a professional
agriculturist into the merits of a pit of marle discovered at
Abbotsford. Had the old man been represented with his cap on his head,
the resemblance to one particular phasis of the most changeful of
countenances would have been perfect.
Robert Scott had a numerous progeny, and Sir Walter has intimated his
intention of recording several of them "with a sincere tribute of
gratitude" in the contemplated prosecution of his autobiography. Two
of the younger sons were bred to the naval service of the East India
Company; one of whom died early and unmarried; the other was the
excellent Captain Robert Scott, of whose kindness to his nephew some
particulars are given in the Ashestiel fragment, and more will occur
hereafter. Another son, Thomas, followed the profession of his father
with ability, and retired in old age upon a handsome independence,
acquired by his industrious exertions. He was twice married,--first to
his near relation, a daughter of Raeburn; and secondly to Miss
Rutherford of Know-South, the estate of which respectable family is
now possessed by his son Charles Scott, an amiable and high-spirited
{p.063} gentleman, who was always a special favorite with his eminent
kinsman. The death of Thomas Scott is thus recorded in one of the MS.
notes on his nephew's own 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 favorite 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
doctor's drugs, he wished to die without doing so."
I visited this old man two years before his death, in company with Sir
Walter, and 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 humor which seems to have been shared by most of the
family. He had the air and manner of an ancient gentleman, and must in
his day have been eminently handsome. I saw more than once, about the
same period, this respectable man's sister, who had married her cousin
Walter, Laird of Raeburn--thus adding a new link to the closeness of
the {p.064} 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; all which contrasted strikingly enough with the
stern dry aspect and manners of her husband, a right descendant of the
moss-troopers of Harden, who never seemed at his ease but on
horseback, and continued to be the boldest fox-hunter of the district,
even to the verge of eighty. The poet's aunt 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.
The particulars which I have been setting down may help English
readers to form some notion of the structure of society in those
southern districts of Scotland. When Satchells wrote, he boasted that
Buccleuch could summon to his banner one hundred lairds, all of his
own name, with ten thousand more--landless men, but still of the same
blood. The younger sons of these various lairds were, through many
successive generations, portioned off with fragments of the
inheritance, until such subdivision could be carried no farther, and
then the cadet, of necessity, either adopted the profession of arms,
in some foreign service very frequently, or became a cultivator on the
estate of his own elder brother, of the chieftain of his branch, or of
the great chief and patriarchal protector of the whole clan. Until the
commerce of England and, {p.065} above all, the military and civil
services of the English colonies were thrown open to the enterprise of
the Scotch, this system of things continued entire. It still remained
in force to a considerable extent at the time when the Goodman of
Sandy-Knowe was establishing his children in the world--and I am happy
to say, that it is far from being abolished even at the present day.
It was a system which bound together the various classes of the rural
population in bonds of mutual love and confidence: the original
community of lineage was equally remembered on all sides; the landlord
could count for more than his rent on the tenant, who regarded him
rather as a father or an elder brother, than as one who owed his
superiority to mere wealth; and the farmer who, on fit occasions,
partook on equal terms of the chase and the hospitality of his
landlord, went back with content and satisfaction to the daily labors
of a vocation which he found no one disposed to consider as derogating
from his gentle blood. Such delusions, if delusions they were, held
the natural arrogance of riches in check, taught the poor man to
believe that in virtuous poverty he had nothing to blush for, and
spread over the whole being of the community the gracious spirit of a
primitive humanity.
Walter Scott, the eldest son of Robert of Sandy-Knowe, appears to have
been the first of the family that ever adopted a town life, or
anything claiming to be classed among the learned professions. His
branch of the law, however, could not in those days be advantageously
prosecuted without extensive connections in the country; his own were
too respectable not to be of much service to him in his calling, and
they were cultivated accordingly. His professional visits to
Roxburghshire and Ettrick Forest were, in his vigorous life, very
frequent; and though he was never supposed to have any tincture either
of romance or poetry in his composition, he retained to the last a
warm affection for his native district, with {p.066} a certain
reluctant flavor of the old feelings and prejudices of the Borderer. I
have little to add to Sir Walter's short and respectful notice of his
father, except that I have heard it confirmed by the testimony of many
less partial observers. According to every account, he was a most
just, honorable, conscientious man; only too high of spirit for some
parts of his business. "He passed from the cradle to the grave," says
a surviving relation, "without making an enemy or losing a friend. He
was a most affectionate parent, and if he discouraged, rather than
otherwise, his son's early devotion to the pursuits which led him to
the height of literary eminence, it was only because he did not
understand what such things meant, and considered it his duty to keep
his young man to that path in which good sense and industry might,
humanly speaking, be thought sure of success."
Sir Walter's mother was short of stature, and by no means comely, at
least after the days of her early youth. She had received, as became
the daughter of an eminently learned physician, the best sort of
education then bestowed on young gentlewomen in Scotland. The poet,
speaking of Mrs. Euphemia Sinclair, the mistress of the school at
which his mother was reared, to the ingenious local antiquary, Mr.
Robert Chambers, said that "she must have been possessed of uncommon
talents for education, as all her young ladies were, in after-life,
fond of reading, wrote and spelled admirably, were well acquainted
with history and the belles-lettres, without neglecting the more
homely duties of the needle and accompt book; and perfectly well-bred
in society." Mr. Chambers adds: "Sir W. further communicated that his
mother, and many others of Mrs. Sinclair's pupils, were sent
afterwards _to be finished off_ by the Honorable Mrs. Ogilvie, a lady
who trained her young friends to a style of manners which would now be
considered intolerably stiff. Such was the effect of this early
training upon the mind {p.067} of Mrs. Scott, that even when she
approached her eightieth year, she took as much care to avoid touching
her chair with her back as if she had still been under the stern eye
of Mrs. Ogilvie."[40] The physiognomy of the poet bore, if their
portraits may be trusted, no resemblance to either of his parents.
[Footnote 40: See Chambers's _Traditions of Edinburgh_, vol.
ii. pp. 127-131. The functions here ascribed to Mrs. Ogilvie
may appear to modern readers little consistent with her rank.
Such things, however, were not uncommon in those days in poor
old Scotland. Ladies with whom I have conversed in my youth
well remembered an _Honorable Mrs. Maitland_ who practised
the obstetric art in the Cowgate.]
Mr. Scott was nearly thirty years of age when he married, and six
children, born to him between 1759 and 1766, all perished in
infancy.[41] A suspicion that the close situation of the College Wynd
had been unfavorable to the health of his family was the motive that
induced him to remove to the house which he ever afterwards occupied
in George's Square.[42] This removal took place shortly after the
poet's birth; and the children born subsequently were in general
healthy. Of a family of twelve, of whom six lived to maturity, not one
now survives; nor have any of them left descendants, except Sir Walter
himself, and his next and dearest brother, Thomas Scott.
[Footnote 41: In Sir Walter Scott's desk, after his death,
there was found a little packet containing six locks of hair,
with this inscription in the handwriting of his mother:--
"1. Anne Scott, born March 10, 1759.
2. Robert Scott, born August 22, 1760.
3. John Scott, born November 28, 1761.
4. Robert Scott, born June 7, 1763.
5. Jean Scott, born March 27, 1765.
6. Walter Scott, born August 30, 1766.
"All these are dead, and none of my present family was born
till some time afterwards."]
[Footnote 42: [No. 25.]]
He says that his consciousness of existence dated from Sandy-Knowe;
and how deep and indelible was the impression which its romantic
localities had left on his imagination, I need not remind the readers
of Marmion and The Eve of St. John. On the summit of the Crags which
{p.068} overhang the farmhouse stands the ruined tower of Smailholme,
the scene of that fine ballad; and the view from thence takes in a
wide expanse of the district in which, as has been truly said, every
field has its battle, and every rivulet its song:--
"That lady sat in mournful mood,
Looked over hill and vale,
O'er Tweed's fair flood, and Mertoun's wood,
And all down Teviotdale."--
Mertoun, the principal seat of the Harden family, with its noble
groves; nearly in front of it, across the Tweed, Lessudden, the
comparatively small but still venerable and stately abode of the
Lairds of Raeburn; and the hoary Abbey of Dryburgh, surrounded with
yew-trees as ancient as itself, seem to lie almost below the feet of
the spectator. Opposite him rise the purple peaks of Eildon, the
traditional scene of Thomas the Rhymer's interview with the Queen of
Faerie; behind are the blasted peel which the seer of Ercildoune
himself inhabited, "the Broom of the Cowdenknowes," the pastoral
valley of the Leader, and the bleak wilderness of Lammermoor. To the
eastward, the desolate grandeur of Hume Castle breaks the horizon, as
the eye travels towards the range of the Cheviot. A few miles
westward, Melrose, "like some tall rock with lichens grey," appears
clasped amidst the windings of the Tweed; and the distance presents
the serrated mountains of the Gala, the Ettrick, and the Yarrow, all
famous in song. Such were the objects that had painted the earliest
images on the eye of the last and greatest of the Border Minstrels.
As his memory reached to an earlier period of childhood than that of
almost any other person, so assuredly no poet has given to the world a
picture of the dawning feelings of life and genius, at once so simple,
so beautiful, and so complete, as that of his epistle to William
Erskine, the chief literary confidant and counsellor of his prime of
manhood.
"Whether {p.069} an impulse that has birth
Soon as the infant wakes on earth,
One with our feelings and our powers,
And rather part of us than ours;
Or whether fitlier term'd the sway
Of habit, formed in early day,
Howe'er derived, its force confest
Rules with despotic sway the breast.
And drags us on by viewless chain,
While taste and reason plead in vain....
Thus, while I ape the measure wild
Of tales that charm'd me yet a child,
Rude though they be, still with the chime
Return the thoughts of early time,
And feelings rous'd in life's first day,
Glow in the line and prompt the lay.
Then rise those crags, that mountain tower
Which charm'd my fancy's wakening hour.
It was a barren scene and wild
Where naked cliffs were rudely piled;
But ever and anon between
Lay velvet tufts of loveliest green;
And well the lonely infant knew
Recesses where the wall-flower grew,
And honey-suckle loved to crawl
Up the low crag and ruin'd wall.
I deem'd such nooks the sweetest shade
The sun in all its round surveyed;
And still I thought that shattered tower
The mightiest work of human power,
And marvelled as the aged hind,
With some strange tale bewitch'd my mind,
Of forayers who, with headlong force,
Down from that strength had spurr'd their horse,
Their southern rapine to renew,
Far in the distant Cheviots blue,
And home returning, fill'd the hall
With revel, wassail-rout, and brawl.
Methought that still with trump and clang
The gateway's broken arches rang;
Methought grim features, seam'd with scars,
Glared through the windows' rusty bars;
And ever, by the winter hearth,
Old tales I heard of woe or mirth,
Of lovers' slights, of ladies' charms,
Of witches' spells, of warriors' arms--
Of patriot battles won of old
By Wallace Wight and Bruce the Bold--
Of {p.070} later fields of feud and fight,
When, pouring from their Highland height,
The Scottish clans, in headlong sway,
Had swept the scarlet ranks away.
While stretched at length upon the floor,
Again I fought each combat o'er,
Pebbles and shells, in order laid,
The mimic ranks of war displayed,
And onward still the Scottish Lion bore,
And still the scattered Southron fled before."[43]
[Footnote 43: [_Poetical Works_, Cambridge Edition, p. 108.]]
There are still living in that neighborhood two old women who were in
the domestic service of Sandy-Knowe when the lame child was brought
thither in the third year of his age. One of them, Tibby Hunter,
remembers his coming well; and that "he was a sweet-tempered bairn, a
darling with all about the house." The young ewe-milkers delighted,
she says, to carry him about on their backs among the crags; and he
was "very gleg (quick) at the uptake, and soon kenned every sheep and
lamb by headmark as well as any of them." His great pleasure, however,
was in the society of the "aged hind," recorded in the epistle to
Erskine. "Auld Sandy Ormistoun," called, from the most dignified part
of his function, "the Cow-bailie," had the chief superintendence of
the flocks that browsed upon "the velvet tufts of loveliest green." If
the child saw him in the morning, he could not be satisfied unless the
old man would set him astride on his shoulder, and take him to keep
him company as he lay watching his charge.
"Here was poetic impulse given
By the green hill and clear blue heaven."
The Cow-bailie blew a particular note on his whistle, which signified
to the maid-servants in the house below when the little boy wished to
be carried home again. He told his friend, Mr. Skene of Rubislaw, when
spending a summer day in his old age among these well-remembered
crags, that he delighted to roll about on the grass all day long in
the midst of the flock, and that "the sort of {p.071} fellowship he
thus formed with the sheep and lambs had impressed his mind with a
degree of affectionate feeling towards them which had lasted
throughout life." There is a story of his having been forgotten one
day among the knolls when a thunderstorm came on; and his aunt,
suddenly recollecting his situation, and running out to bring him
home, is said to have found him lying on his back, clapping his hands
at the lightning, and crying out, "Bonny! bonny!" at every flash.
I find the following marginal note on his copy of Allan Ramsay's
Tea-Table Miscellany (edition 1724): "This book belonged to my
grandfather, Robert Scott, and out of it I was taught Hardiknute by
heart before I could read the ballad myself. It was the first poem I
ever learnt--the last I shall ever forget." According to Tibby Hunter,
he was not particularly fond of his book, embracing every pretext for
joining his friend the Cow-bailie out of doors; but "Miss Jenny was a
grand hand at keeping him to the bit, and by degrees he came to read
brawly."[44] An early acquaintance of a higher class, Mrs. Duncan, the
wife of the present excellent minister of Mertoun, informs me, that
though she was younger than Sir Walter, she has a dim remembrance of
the interior of Sandy-Knowe--"Old Mrs. Scott sitting, with her
spinning-wheel, at one side of the fire, in a _clean clean_ parlor;
the grandfather, a good deal failed, in his elbow-chair opposite; and
the little boy lying on the carpet, at the old man's feet, listening
to the Bible, or whatever good book Miss Jenny was reading to
them."[45]
[Footnote 44: This old woman still possesses "the _banes_"
(bones)--that is to say, the boards--of a Psalm-book, which
Master Walter gave her at Sandy-Knowe. "He chose it," she
says, "of a very large print, that I might be able to read it
when I was _very auld--forty year auld_; but the bairns
pulled the leaves out langsyne."]
[Footnote 45: [In writing of his little grandson's earliest
lessons, Scott recalls these days in a letter to Lockhart
(March 3, 1826):--
"I rejoice to hear of Johnnie's grand flip towards
instruction. I hope Mrs. Mactavish, whom I like not the
worse, you may be sure, for her name, will be mild in her
rule, and let him listen to reading a good deal without
cramming the alphabet and grammar down the poor child's
throat. I cannot at this moment tell how or when I learned to
read, but it was by fits and snatches, as one aunt or another
in the old rumble-tumble farmhouses could give me a lesson,
and I am sure it increased my love and habit of reading more
than the austerities of a school could have done. I gave
trouble, I believe, in wishing to be taught, and in
self-defence gradually acquired the mystery myself. Johnnie
is infirm a little, though not so much so as I was, and often
he has brought back to my recollection the days of my own
childhood. I hope he will be twice any good that was in me,
with less carelessness."--Lang's _Life of Lockhart_, vol. i.
p. 397.]]
Robert {p.072} Scott died before his grandson was four years of age;
and I heard him mention when he was an old man that he distinctly
remembered the writing and sealing of the funeral letters, and all the
ceremonial of the melancholy procession as it left Sandy-Knowe. I
shall conclude my notices of the residence at Sandy-Knowe with
observing that in Sir Walter's account of the friendly clergyman who
so often sat at his grandfather's fireside, we cannot fail to trace
many features of the secluded divine in the novel of St. Ronan's Well.
I have nothing to add to what he has told us of that excursion to
England which interrupted his residence at Sandy-Knowe for about a
twelvemonth, except that I had often been astonished, long before I
read his autobiographic fragment, with the minute recollection he
seemed to possess of all the striking features of the city of Bath,
which he had never seen again since he quitted it before he was six
years of age. He has himself alluded, in his Memoir, to the lively
recollection he retained of his first visit to the theatre, to which
his Uncle Robert carried him to witness a representation of As You
Like It. In his reviewal of the Life of John Kemble, written in 1826,
he has recorded that impression more fully, and in terms so striking,
that I must copy them in this place:--
"There are few things which those gifted with any degree of
imagination recollect with a sense of more anxious and mysterious
delight than the first dramatic representation which they have
witnessed. The unusual form of the house, filled with such
groups {p.073} of crowded spectators, themselves forming an
extraordinary spectacle to the eye which has never witnessed it
before, yet all intent upon that wide and mystic curtain, whose
dusky undulations permit us now and then to discern the momentary
glitter of some gaudy form, or the spangles of some sandalled
foot, which trips lightly within: Then the light, brilliant as
that of day; then the music, which, in itself a treat sufficient
in every other situation, our inexperience mistakes for the very
play we came to witness; then the slow rise of the shadowy
curtain, disclosing, as if by actual magic, a new land, with
woods, and mountains, and lakes, lighted, it seems to us, by
another sun, and inhabited by a race of beings different from
ourselves, whose language is poetry,--whose dress, demeanor, and
sentiments seem something supernatural,--and whose whole actions
and discourse are calculated not for the ordinary tone of
every-day life, but to excite the stronger and more powerful
faculties--to melt with sorrow, overpower with terror, astonish
with the marvellous, or convulse with irresistible laughter:--all
these wonders stamp indelible impressions on the memory. Those
mixed feelings, also, which perplex us between a sense that the
scene is but a plaything, and an interest which ever and anon
surprises us into a transient belief that that which so strongly
affects us cannot be fictitious; those mixed and puzzling
feelings, also, are exciting in the highest degree. Then there
are the bursts of applause, like distant thunder, and the
permission afforded to clap our little hands, and add our own
scream of delight to a sound so commanding. All this, and much,
much more, is fresh in our memory, although, when we felt these
sensations, we looked on the stage which Garrick had not yet
left. It is now a long while since; yet we have not passed many
hours of such unmixed delight, and we still remember the sinking
lights, the dispersing crowd, with the vain longings which we
felt that the music would again sound, the magic curtain once
more arise, and the enchanting dream recommence; and the
astonishment with which we looked upon the apathy of the elder
part of our company, who, having the means, did not spend every
evening in the theatre."[46]
[Footnote 46: _Miscellaneous Prose Works_, vol. xx. p. 154.]
Probably it was this performance that first tempted him {p.074} to
open the page of Shakespeare. Before he returned to Sandy-Knowe,
assuredly, notwithstanding the modest language of his autobiography,
the progress which had been made in his intellectual education was
extraordinary; and it is impossible to doubt that his hitherto almost
sole tutoress, Miss Jenny Scott, must have been a woman of tastes and
acquirements very far above what could have been often found among
Scotch ladies, of any but the highest class at least, in that day. In
the winter of 1777, she and her charge spent some few weeks--not happy
weeks, the Memoir hints them to have been--in George's Square,
Edinburgh; and it so happened, that during this little interval, Mr.
and Mrs. Scott received in their domestic circle a guest capable of
appreciating, and, fortunately for us, of recording in a very striking
manner the remarkable development of young Walter's faculties. Mrs.
Cockburn, mentioned by him in his Memoir as the authoress of the
modern Flowers of the Forest, born a Rutherford, of Fairnalie, in
Selkirkshire, was distantly related to the poet's mother, with whom
she had through life been in habits of intimate friendship. This
accomplished woman was staying at Ravelston, in the vicinity of
Edinburgh, a seat of the Keiths of Dunnottar, nearly related to Mrs.
Scott, and to herself. With some of that family she spent an evening
in George's Square. She chanced to be writing next day to Dr. Douglas,
the well-known and much respected minister of her native parish,
Galashiels; and her letter, of which the Doctor's son has kindly given
me a copy, contains the following passage:--
"Edinburgh, Saturday night, 15th of 'the gloomy month when the
people of England hang and drown themselves.'
... "I last night supped in Mr. Walter Scott's. He has the most
extraordinary genius of a boy I ever saw. He was reading a poem
to his mother when I went in. I made him read on; it was the
description of a shipwreck. His passion rose with the storm. He
lifted his eyes and hands. 'There's the {p.075} mast gone,'
says he; 'crash it goes!--they will all perish!' After his
agitation, he turns to me. 'That is too melancholy,' says he; 'I
had better read you something more amusing.' I preferred a little
chat, and asked his opinion of Milton and other books he was
reading, which he gave me wonderfully. One of his observations
was, 'How strange it is that Adam, just new come into the world,
should know everything--that must be the poet's fancy,' says he.
But when he was told he was created perfect by God, he instantly
yielded. When taken to bed last night, he told his aunt he liked
that lady. 'What lady?' says she. 'Why, Mrs. Cockburn; for I
think she is a virtuoso like myself.' 'Dear Walter,' says Aunt
Jenny, 'what is a virtuoso?' 'Don't ye know? Why, it's one who
wishes and will know everything.'[47]--Now, sir, you will think
this a very silly story. Pray, what age do you suppose this boy
to be? Name it now, before I tell you. Why, twelve or fourteen.
No such thing; he is not quite six years old.[48] He has a lame
leg, for which he was a year at Bath, and has acquired the
perfect English accent, which he has not lost since he came, and
he reads like a Garrick. You will allow this an uncommon exotic."
[Footnote 47: It may amuse my reader to recall, by the side
of Scott's early definition of "a virtuoso," the lines in
which Akenside has painted that character--lines which might
have been written for a description of the Author of
_Waverley_:--
"He knew the various modes of ancient times,
Their arts and fashions of each various guise;
Their weddings, funerals, punishments of crimes;
Their strength, their learning eke, and rarities.
Of old habiliment, each sort and size,
Male, female, high and low, to him were known;
Each gladiator's dress, and stage disguise,
With learned clerkly phrase he could have shown."]
[Footnote 48: He was, in fact, six years and three months old
before this letter was written.]
Some particulars in Mrs. Cockburn's account appear considerably at
variance with what Sir Walter has told us respecting his own boyish
proficiency--especially in the article of pronunciation. On that last
head, however, Mrs. Cockburn was not, probably, a very accurate judge;
all that can be said is, that if at this early period he had acquired
anything which could be justly described as {p.076} an English
accent, he soon lost, and never again recovered, what he had thus
gained from his short residence at Bath. In after-life his
pronunciation of words, considered separately, was seldom much
different from that of a well-educated Englishman of his time; but he
used many words in a sense which belonged to Scotland, not to England,
and the tone and accent remained broadly Scotch, though, unless in the
_burr_, which no doubt smacked of the country bordering on
Northumberland, there was no _provincial_ peculiarity about his
utterance. He had strong powers of mimicry--could talk with a peasant
quite in his own style, and frequently in general society introduced
rustic _patois_, northern, southern, or midland, with great truth and
effect; but these things were inlaid dramatically, or playfully, upon
his narrative. His exquisite taste in this matter was not less
remarkable in his conversation than in the prose of his Scotch novels.
Another lady, nearly connected with the Keiths of Ravelston, has a
lively recollection of young Walter, when paying a visit much about
the same period to his kind relation,[49] the mistress of that
picturesque old mansion, which furnished him in after-days with many
of the features of his Tully-Veolan, and whose venerable gardens, with
their massive hedges of yew and holly, he always considered as the
ideal of the art. The lady, whose letter I have now before me, says
she distinctly remembers the sickly boy sitting at the gate of the
house with his attendant, when a poor mendicant approached, old and
woe-begone, to claim the charity which none asked for in vain at
Ravelston. When the man was retiring, the servant remarked to Walter
that he ought to be thankful to Providence for having placed him above
the want and misery he had been contemplating. The child looked up
with a half-wistful, half-incredulous expression, {p.077} and said,
"_Homer was a beggar_!" "How do you know that?" said the other. "Why,
don't you remember," answered the little virtuoso, "that
'Seven _Roman_ cities strove for Homer dead,
Through which the living Homer begged his bread?'"
The lady smiled at the "_Roman_ cities,"--but already
"Each blank in faithless memory void
The poet's glowing thought supplied."
[Footnote 49: Mrs. Keith of Ravelston was born a Swinton of
Swinton, and sister to Sir Walter's maternal grandmother.]
It was in this same year, 1777, that he spent some time at
Prestonpans; made his first acquaintance with George Constable, the
original of his Monkbarns; explored the field where Colonel Gardiner
received his death-wound, under the learned guidance of Dalgetty; and
marked the spot "where the grass long grew rank and green,
distinguishing it from the rest of the field,"[50] above the grave of
poor Balmawhapple.
[Footnote 50: _Waverley_, chap, xlvii. note.]
His Uncle Thomas, whom I have described as I saw him in extreme old
age at Monklaw, had the management of the farm affairs at Sandy-Knowe,
when Walter returned thither from Prestonpans; he was a kind-hearted
man, and very fond of the child. Appearing on his return somewhat
strengthened, his uncle promoted him from the Cow-bailie's shoulder to
a dwarf of the Shetland race, not so large as many a Newfoundland dog.
This creature walked freely into the house, and was regularly fed from
the boy's hand. He soon learned to sit her well, and often alarmed
Aunt Jenny, by cantering over the rough places about the tower. In the
evening of his life, when he had a grandchild afflicted with an
infirmity akin to his own, he provided him with a little mare of the
same breed, and gave her the name of _Marion_, in memory of this early
favorite.