University of Virginia Library

137. LETTER CXXXVII.

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-looking 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 brass-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 sleep
ing 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
elaborated 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 headquarters 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 really is 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
Abbottsford, 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 that 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 Shakspere.
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 Abbottsford
— 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 play-fellow
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
Scott, `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, overrun 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.