SCOTCH SCENERY—A RACE—CHEAPNESS OF LODGINGS IN EDINBURGH—
ABBOTTSFORD—SCOTT—LORD DALHOUSIE—THOMAS MOORE—JANE PORTER—
THE GRAVE OF SCOTT.
I was delighted to find Stirling rather worse than Albany in the matter
of steamers. I had a running fight for my portmanteau and carpet-bag
from the hotel to the pier, and was at last embarked in entirely the
wrong boat, by sheer force of pulling and lying. They could scarce have
put me in a greater rage between Cruttenden’s and the Overslaugh.
The two rival steamers, the Victory and the Ben Lomond, got under way
together; the former, in which I was a compulsory passenger, having a
flagelet and a bass drum by way of a band, and the other a dozen lusty
performers and most of the company. The river was very narrow and the
tide down, and though the other was the better boat, we had the bolder
pilot, and were lighter laden and twice as desperate. I found my own
spunk stirred irresistibly after the first mile. We were contending
against odds, and there was something in it that touched my Americanism
nearly. We had three small boys mounted on the box over the wheel, who
cheered and waved their hats at our momentary advantages; but the
channel was full of windings, and if we gained on the larboard tack we
lost on the starboard. Whenever we were quite abreast and the wheels
touched with the narrowness of the river, we marched our flagelet and
bass-drum close to the enemy and gave them a blast “to wake the dead,”
taking occasion, during our moments of defeat, to recover breath and ply
the principal musician with beer and encouragement. It was a scene for
Cooper to describe. The two pilots stood broad on their legs, every
muscle on the alert; and though Ben Lomond wore the cleaner jacket,
Victory had the “varminter” look. You would have bet on Victory to have
seen the man. He was that wickedest of all wicked things, a wicked
Scotchman—a sort of saint-turned-sinner. The expression of early good
principles was glazed over with drink and recklessness, like a scene
from the Inferno painted over a Madonna of Raphael’s. It was written in
his face that he was a transgressor against knowledge. We were perhaps,
a half-dozen passengers, exclusive of the boys, and we rallied round our
Bardolph nosed hero and applauded his skilful manœuvres; sun, steam, and
excitement together, producing a temperature on deck that left nothing
to dread from the boiler. As we approached a sharp bend in the course of
the stream, I perceived by the countenance of our pilot, that it was to
be a critical moment. The Ben Lomond was a little ahead, but we had the
advantage of the inside of the course, and very soon, with the
commencement of the curve, we gained sensibly on the enemy, and I saw
clearly that we should cut her off by a half-boat’s length. The three
boys on the wheel began to shout, the flagelet made all split again with
“the Campbells are comin’,” the bass-drum was never so belabored, and
“Up with your helm!” cried every voice, as we came at the rate of twelve
miles in the hour sharp on to the angle of mud and bulrushes, and, to
our utter surprise, the pilot jammed down his tiller, and ran the
battered nose of the Victory plump in upon the enemy’s forward quarter!
The next moment we were going it like mad down the middle of the river,
and far astern stuck the Ben Lomond in the mud, her paddles driving her
deeper at every stroke, her music hushed, and the crowd on her deck
standing speechless with amazement. The flagelet and bass-drum marched
aft and played louder than ever, and we were soon in the open Frith,
getting on merrily, but without competition, to the sleeping isle of
Inchkeith. Lucky Victory! luckier pilot! to have found an historian! How
many a red-nosed Palinurus—how many a bass drum and flagelet, have done
their duty as well, yet achieved no immortality.
I was glad to see “Auld Reekie” again, though the influx of strangers to
the “Scientific Meeting” had over-run every hotel, and I was an hour or
two without a home. I lit at last upon a good old Scotchwoman who had “a
flat” to herself, and who, for the sum of one shilling and sixpence per
diem, proposed to transfer her only boarder from his bed to a sofa, as
long as I should wish to stay. I made a humane remonstrance against the
inconvenience to her friend. “It’s only a Jew,” she said, “and they’re
na difficult, puir bodies!” The Hebrew came in while we were debating
the point—a smirking gentleman, with very elaborate whiskers, much
better dressed than the proposed usurper of his sanctum—and without the
slightest hesitation professed that nothing would give him so much pain
as to stand in the way of his landlady’s interest. So for
eighteen-pence—and I could not prevail on her to take another
farthing—I had a Jew put to inconvenience, a bed, boots and clothes
brushed, and Mrs. Mac—to sit up for me till two in the morning—what
the Jew himself would have called a “cheap article.”
* * * * *
I returned to my delightful quarters at Dalhousie Castle on the
following day, and among many excursions in the neighborhood during the
ensuing week, accomplished a visit to Abbottsford. This most interesting
of all spots has been so minutely and so often described, that a
detailed account of it would be a mere repetition. Description, however,
has anticipated nothing to the visiter. The home of Sir Walter Scott
would possess an interest to thrill the heart, if it were as well
painted to the eye of fancy as the homes of his own heroes.
It is a dreary country about Abbottsford, and the house itself looks
from a distance like a small, low castle, buried in stunted trees, on
the side of a long, sloping upland or moor. The river is between you and
the chateau as you come down to Melrose from the north, and you see the
gray towers opposite you from the road at the distance of a mile—the
only habitable spot in an almost desolate waste of country. From the
town of Melrose you approach Abbottsford by a long, green lane, and,
from the height of the hedge and the descending ground on which the
house is built, you would scarce suspect its vicinity till you enter a
small gate on the right and find yourself in an avenue of young trees.
This conducts you immediately to the door, and the first effect on me
was that of a spacious castle seen through a reversed glass. In fact it
is a kind of castle cottage—not larger than what is often called a
cottage in England, yet to the minutest point and proportion a model of
an ancient castle. The deception in the engravings of the place lies in
the scale. It seems like a vast building as usually drawn.
One or two hounds were lounging round the door; but the only tenant of
the place was a slovenly housemaid, whom we interrupted in the profane
task of scrubbing the furniture in the library. I could have pitched her
and her scrubbing brushes out of the window with a good will. It is
really a pity that this sacred place, with its thousand valuable and
irreplaceable curiosities, should be so carelessly neglected. We were
left to wander over the house and the museum as we liked. I could have
brought away—and nothing is more common than this species of theft in
England—twenty things from that rare collection, of which the value
could scarce be estimated. The pistols and dagger of Rob Roy, and a
hundred equally valuable and pocketable things, lay on the shelves
unprotected, quite at the mercy of the ill-disposed, to say nothing of
the merciless “cleanings” of the housemaid. The present Sir Walter Scott
is a captain of dragoons, with his regiment in Ireland, and the place is
never occupied by the family. Why does not _Scotland_ buy Abbotsford,
and secure to herself, while it is still perfect, the home of her great
magician, and the spot that to after ages would be, if preserved in its
curious details, the most interesting in Great Britain?
After showing us the principal rooms, the woman opened a small closet
adjoining the study, in which hung the last clothes that Sir Walter had
worn. There was the broad-skirted blue coat with large buttons, the
plaid trousers, the heavy shoes, the broad-rimmed hat and stout
walking-stick—the dress in which he rambled about in the morning, and
which he laid off when he took to his bed in his last illness. She took
down the coat and gave it a shake and a wipe of the collar, as if he
were waiting to put it on again!
It was encroaching somewhat on the province of Touchstone and Wamba to
moralize on a suit of clothes—but I am convinced I got from them a
better idea of Scott, as he was in his familiar hours, than any man can
have who has seen neither him nor them. There was a character in the hat
and shoes. The coat was an honest and hearty coat. The stout, rough
walking-stick, seemed as if it could have belonged to no other man. I
appeal to my kind friends and fellow travellers who were there three
days before me (I saw their names on the book,) if the same impression
was not made on them.
I asked for the room in which Sir Walter died. She showed it to me, and
the place where the bed had stood, which was now removed. I was curious
to see the wall or the picture over which his last looks must have
passed. Directly opposite the foot of the bed hung a remarkable
picture—the head of Mary Queen of Scots, in a dish taken after her
execution. The features were composed and beautiful. On either side of
it hung spirited drawings from the Tales of a Grandfather—one very
clever sketch, representing the wife of a border-knight serving up her
husband’s spurs for dinner, to remind him of the poverty of the larder
and the necessity of a foray. On the left side of the bed was a broad
window to the west—the entrance of the last light to his eyes—and from
hence had sped the greatest spirit that has walked the world since
Shakspeare. It almost makes the heart stand still to be silent and alone
on such a spot.
What an interest there is in the trees of Abbotsford—planted every one
by the same hand that waved its wand of enchantment over the world! One
walks among them as if they had thoughts and memories.
Everybody talks of Scott who has ever had the happiness of seeing him,
and it is strange how interesting it is even when there is no anecdote,
and only the most commonplace interview is narrated. I have heard, since
I have been in England, hundreds of people describe their conversations
with him, and never the dullest without a certain interest far beyond
that of common topics. Some of these have been celebrated people, and
there is the additional weight that they were honored friends of Sir
Walter’s.
Lord Dalhousie told me that he was Scott’s playfellow at the high school
of Edinboro’. There was a peculiar arrangement of the benches with a
head and foot, so that the boys sat above or below, according to their
success in recitation. It so happened that the warmest seat in the
school, that next to the stove, was about two from the bottom, and this
Scott, who was a very good scholar, contrived never to leave. He stuck
to his seat from autumn till spring, never so deficient as to get down,
and never choosing to answer rightly if the result was to go up. He was
very lame, and seldom shared in the sports of the other boys, but was a
prodigious favorite, and loved to sit in the sunshine, with a knot of
boys around him, telling stories. Lord Dalhousie’s friendship with him
was uninterrupted through life, and he invariably breakfasted at the
castle on his way to and from Edinboro’.
I met Moore at a dinner party not long since, and Scott was again, (as
at a previous dinner I have described) the subject of conversation. “He
was the soul of honesty,” said Moore. “When I was on a visit to him, we
were coming up from Kelso at sunset, and as there was to be a fine moon,
I quoted to him his own rule for seeing ‘fair Melrose aright,’ and
proposed to stay an hour and enjoy it. ‘Bah!’ said he, ‘_I_ never saw it
by moonlight.’ We went, however; and Scott, who seemed to be on the most
familiar terms with the cicerone, pointed to an empty niche and said to
him, ‘I think, by the way, that I have a Virgin and Child that will just
do for your niche. I’ll send it to you!’ ‘How happy you have made that
man!’ said I to him. ‘Oh,’ said Scott, ‘it was always in the way, and
Madame S. is constantly grudging it house-room. We’re well rid of it.’
“Any other man,” said Moore, “would have allowed himself at least the
credit of a kind action.”
I have had the happiness since I have been in England of passing some
weeks at a country house where Miss Jane Porter was an honored guest,
and, among a thousand of the most delightful reminiscences that were
ever treasured, she has told me a great deal of Scott, who visited at
her mother’s as a boy. She remembers him then as a good-humored lad, but
very fond of fun, who used to take her younger sister, (Anna Maria
Porter) and frighten her by holding her out of the window. Miss Porter
had not seen him since that age; but, after the appearance of Guy
Mannering, she heard that he was in London, and drove with a friend to
his house. Not quite sure (as she modestly says) of being remembered,
she sent in a note, saying, that if he remembered the Porters, whom he
used to visit, Jane would like to see him. He came rushing to the door,
and exclaimed, “_Remember_ you! Miss Porter,” and threw his arms about
her neck and burst into tears. After this he corresponded constantly
with the family, and about the time of his first stroke of paralysis,
when his mind and memory failed him, the mother of Miss Porter died, and
Scott sent a letter of condolence. It began—“Dear Miss Porter”—but, as
he went on, he forgot himself, and continued the letter as if addressed
to her mother, ending it with—“And now, dear Mrs. Porter, farewell! and
believe me yours for ever (as long as there is anything of me) Walter
Scott.” Miss Porter bears testimony, like every one else who knew him,
to his greatheartedness no less than to his genius.
I am not sure that others like as well as myself these “nothings” about
men of genius. I would rather hear the conversation between Scott and a
peasant on the road, for example, than the most piquant anecdote of his
brighter hours. I like a great mind in dishabille.
We returned by Melrose Abbey, of which I can say nothing new, and drove
to Dryburgh to see the grave of Scott. He is buried in a rich old Gothic
corner of a ruin—fittingly. He chose the spot, and he sleeps well. The
sunshine is broken on his breast by a fretted and pinnacled window,
over-run with ivy, and the small chapel in which he lies is open to the
air, and ornamented with the mouldering scutcheons of his race. There
are few more beautiful ruins than Dryburgh Abbey, and Scott lies in its
sunniest and most fanciful nook—a grave that seems divested of the
usual horrors of a grave.
We were ascending the Gala-water at sunset, and supped at Dalhousie,
after a day crowned with thought and feeling.