LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT.

BY ROBERT CHAMBERS. LL.D. WITH ABBOTSFORD NOTANDA BY ROBERT CARRUTHERS, LL.D.

EDITED BY W. CHAMBERS.

W. & R. CHAMBERS, EDINBURGH AND LONDON. 1871.

LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT By ROBERT CHAMBERS, LL.D.

WITH ABBOTSFORD NOTANDA By ROBERT CARRUTHERS, LL.D.

Edited by W. CHAMBERS

W. & R. CHAMBERS LONDON AND EDINBURGH 1871

Edinburgh: Printed by W. and R. Chambers.

PREFATORY NOTE.

The present Memoir of Sir Walter Scott was written by my brother, the late Dr R. Chambers, immediately after the decease of the great novelist, and having been issued at a small price for popular reading, had what was then considered a large circulation—180,000 copies. It was subsequently republished, with some improvements. The Memoir is now reproduced in somewhat better style, as a small but fitting contribution in homage of the great man, the centenary of whose birth, 15th August 1871, is about to be very generally celebrated. I have taken the liberty of adding only a few paragraphs, distinguishable by being enclosed within brackets. The principal of these insertions refers to the manner in which my brother had the honour to become acquainted with, and acquired the esteem of, Sir Walter Scott.

To the Memoir are now appropriately appended certain ‘Abbotsford Notanda,’ descriptive of the friendly intercourse which long subsisted between Sir Walter and his factor and amanuensis, William Laidlaw, prepared by one well qualified to write on the subject, Dr R. Carruthers, Inverness.

W. C.

Edinburgh, June 1871.

CONTENTS.

1

PARENTAGE.

Sir Walter Scott was one of the sons of Walter Scott, Esq., Writer to the Signet, by Anne, daughter of Dr John Rutherford, Professor of the Practice of Medicine in the University of Edinburgh.

His paternal grandfather, Mr Robert Scott, farmer at Sandyknow, in the vicinity of Smailholm Tower, in Roxburghshire, was the son of Mr Walter Scott, a younger son of Walter Scott of Raeburn, who in his turn was third son of Sir William Scott of Harden, in which family the chieftainship of the race of Scott is now understood to reside. Sir Walter’s grandfather, Mr Robert Scott, farmer at Sandyknow, as we learn from the Border Antiquities, ‘though both descended from and allied to several respectable Border families, was2 chiefly distinguished for the excellent good sense and independent spirit which enabled him to lead the way in agricultural improvement—then a pursuit abandoned to persons of a very inferior description. His memory was long preserved in Teviotdale, and still survives, as that of an active and intelligent farmer, and the father of a family all of whom were distinguished by talents, probity, and remarkable success in the pursuits which they adopted.’

Walter, the third son of Sir William Scott of Harden, lived at the time of the Restoration, and embraced the tenets of Quakerism, which at that period made their way into Scotland. For this he endured a degree of persecution for which it is now difficult to assign a reason. The Scottish Privy-council, by an edict dated June 20, 1665, directed his brother, the existing representative of the Harden family, to take away his three children, and educate them separately, so that they might not become infected with the same heresy; and, for doing so, he was to be entitled to sue his brother for the maintenance of the children. By a second edict, dated July 5, 1666, the Council directed two thousand pounds Scots money to be paid by the Laird of Raeburn for this purpose; and, as he was now confined in the Tolbooth of Edinburgh, where he was liable to be further tainted by converse with others of the same sect there also imprisoned, the Council further ordered him to be transported to the jail of Jedburgh, where no one was to have access to him but such as

might be expected, to convert him from his present principles.

Walter, the second son of this gentleman, and father to the novelist’s grandfather, received a good education3 at Glasgow College, under the protection of his uncle. He was a zealous Jacobite—a friend and correspondent of Dr Pitcairn—and made a vow never to shave his beard till the exiled House of Stuart should be restored; whence he acquired the name of Beardie.

Dr John Rutherford, maternal grandfather to the subject of this memoir, was one of four Scottish pupils of Boerhaave, who, in the early part of the last century, contributed to establish the high character of the Edinburgh University as a school of medicine. He was the first Professor of the Practice of Physic in the university, to which office he was elected in 1727, and which he resigned in 1766, in favour of the celebrated Dr John Gregory. He was also the first person who delivered lectures on Clinical Medicine in the Infirmary. His son, Dr Daniel Rutherford, maternal uncle to the novelist, was afterwards, for a long period, Professor of Botany in the Edinburgh University, and further distinguished by his great proficiency in chemistry. Dr D. Rutherford was one of the cleverest scientific men of his day; and, but for certain unimportant circumstances, would have been preferred to the high honour of succeeding Black in the chair of Chemistry. When he took his degree in 1772, Pneumatic Chemistry was in its infancy. Upon this occasion he published a thesis,

in which the doctrines respecting gaseous bodies are laid down with great perspicuity, as far as they were then known, and an account also given of a series of experiments made by himself, which discover much ingenuity and address. He was the first European chemist who, if the expression may be used, discovered nitrogen. Had he proceeded a single step farther, he would have anticipated the discoveries of Priestley,4 Scheele, and Lavoisier, respecting oxygen, which have rendered their names immortal. As it was, the experiments and discoveries of Dr Rutherford made his name respected all over Europe.

The wife of Dr John Rutherford, and maternal grandmother of Sir Walter Scott, was Jean Swinton, daughter of Swinton of Swinton, in Berwickshire, one of the oldest families in Scotland, and at one period very powerful. Sir Walter has introduced a chivalric representative of this race into his drama of Halidon Hill. The grandfather of Jean Swinton was Sir John Swinton, the twentieth baron in lineal descent, and the son of the celebrated Judge Swinton, to whom, along with Sir William Lockhart of Lee, Cromwell intrusted the chief management of civil affairs in Scotland during his usurpation. Lord Swinton, as he was called, in virtue of his judicial character, was seized, after the Restoration, and brought down to Scotland for trial, in the same vessel with the Marquis of Argyll. It was generally expected that one who had played so conspicuous a part in the late usurpation, would not elude the vengeance of the new government. He escaped, however, by suddenly adopting the tenets of the society to which Walter Scott of Raeburn afterwards attached

himself. On being brought before the parliament for trial, he rejected all means of legal defence; and his simply penitent appearance and venerable aspect wrought so far with his judges, that he was acquitted, while less obnoxious men were condemned. It was from this extraordinary person, and while confined along with him in Edinburgh Castle, that Colonel David Barclay, father of Robert Barclay, the eminent author of the Apology for the Quakers, contracted those sentiments5 which afterwards shone forth with such remarkable lustre in his son.

While the ancestry of Sir Walter Scott is thus shewn to have been somewhat more than respectable, it must be also stated, that, in his character as a man, a citizen, or a professional agent, there could not be a more worthy member of society than his immediate parent. Mr Walter Scott, born in 1729, and admitted as a Writer to the Signet in 1755, was by no means a man of shining abilities. He was, however, a steady, expert man of business, insomuch as to prosper considerably in life; and nothing could exceed the gentleness, sincerity, and benevolence of his character. For many years, he held the honourable office of an elder in the parish church of Old Greyfriars, while Dr Robertson, the historian of America and Charles V., acted as one of the ministers. The other clergyman was Dr John Erskine, much more distinguished as a divine, and of whom Sir Walter has given an animated picture in his novel of Guy Mannering. The latter person led the more zealous party of the Church of Scotland, in opposition to his colleague, Dr Robertson, who swayed

the moderate and predominating party; and it is believed that, although a Jacobite, and employed mostly by that party, the religious impressions of Mr Scott were more akin to the doctrines maintained by Erskine, than those professed by Robertson.

Mrs Scott, while she boasted a less prepossessing exterior than her husband, was enabled, partly by the more literary character of her connections and education, and more perhaps by native powers of intellect, to make a greater impression in conversation. It has thus become a conceded point, that Sir Walter derived6 his abilities almost exclusively from this parent. Without pretending to judge in a matter of such delicacy, it may at least be allowed that the young poet was at first greatly indebted to his mother for an introduction to the literary society of which her father and brother were such distinguished ornaments. It has somewhere been alleged that Mrs Scott, who was an intimate friend of Allan Ramsay, Blacklock, and other poetical wits of the last century, wrote verses, like them, in the vernacular language of Scotland. But this can be denied, upon the testimony of her own son. The mistake has probably arisen in consequence of a Mrs Scott of Wauchope, whose maiden name was likewise Rutherford, having published poetry of her own composition.

Mrs Walter Scott, who was altogether a woman of the highest order of intellect and character, was, at an early age, deemed worthy by her father to be intrusted with the charge of his house, during his temporary widowhood; and thus she possessed opportunities enjoyed by few young ladies of her own age, and of the period when she lived, of mixing in literary society. It is unquestionable that this circumstance was likely to have some effect in later life upon her son, with the training of whose mind she must, in virtue of her maternal character, have had more to do than her husband. It may be further mentioned that Mrs Scott had been principally educated by a reduced gentlewoman, a Mrs Euphemia Sinclair (grand-daughter of Sir Robert Sinclair of Longformacus), who kept a school for young ladies in the now wretched precincts of Blackfriars’ Wynd, in Edinburgh, and who had the honour of educating many of the female nobility and gentry of Scotland, some of whom were her own7 relations. Sir Walter’s own words respecting this person are given in the work entitled Traditions of

Edinburgh: ‘To judge by the proficiency of her scholars, although much of what is called accomplishment might then be left untaught, she must have been possessed of uncommon talents for education; for all the ladies above mentioned’ [the list includes Mrs Scott] ‘had well-cultivated minds, were fond of reading, wrote and spelled admirably, were well acquainted with history and with the belles-lettres, without neglecting the more homely duties of the needle and accompt-book; and, while two of them’ [meaning, as there is reason to believe, Mrs Scott, and Mrs Murray Keith, the Mrs Bethune Baliol of the Chronicles of the Canongate] ‘were women of extraordinary talents, all of them were perfectly well bred in society.’ Sir Walter further communicated that his mother, and many others of Mrs Sinclair’s pupils, were sent, according to a fashion then prevalent in good society, to be finished off by the Honourable Mrs Ogilvie, lady of the Honourable Patrick Ogilvie of Longmay, whose brother, the Earl of Seafield, was so instrumental, as Chancellor of

Scotland, in carrying through the union with England. Mrs Ogilvie trained her young friends to a style of manners which would now be considered intolerably stiff; for instance, no young lady, in sitting, was permitted ever to touch the back of her chair. Such was the effect of this early training upon the mind 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.

8

BIRTH—BIRTHPLACE—EARLY SCENES.

Sir Walter Scott was born at Edinburgh on the 15th of August 1771, being the birthday of the great European hero [Napoleon] whose deeds he was afterwards to record. He was the third of a family consisting of six sons and one daughter. The eldest son, John, attained to a captaincy in an infantry regiment, but was early obliged to retire from service on account of the delicate state of his health. Another elder brother, Daniel, was a sailor, but died in early life. Of him Sir Walter has often been heard to assert, that he was by far the cleverest and most interesting of the whole. Thomas, the next brother to Sir Walter, followed the father’s profession, and was for some years factor to the Marquis of Abercorn, but eventually died in Canada in 1822, in the capacity of paymaster to the 70th Regiment. Sir Walter himself entertained a fondly high opinion of the talents of this brother; but it is not borne out by the sense of his other friends. He possessed, however, some burlesque humour, and an acquaintance with Scottish manners and character—qualities which

were apt to impose a little, and even induced some individuals to believe, for some time, that he, rather than his more gifted brother, was the author of ‘The Novels.’

Existence opened upon the author of Waverley in one of the duskiest parts of the ancient capital, which he has been pleased to apostrophise in Marmion as his ‘own romantic town.’ At the time of his birth, and for some time after, his father lived at the head of the College Wynd, a narrow alley leading from the Cowgate to the gate of the college. The two lower flats of the house were occupied by Mr Keith, W.S., grandfather of the9 Knight Marischal of Scotland, and Mr Walter Scott lodged on the third floor, his part of the mansion being accessible by a stair behind.

It was a house of what would now be considered humble aspect, but at that time neither humble from its individual appearance nor from its vicinage. As it stood on the line necessary for the opening of a street along the north skirt of the new university buildings, it was destroyed on that occasion, and never rebuilt. Speaking of this house in a series of notes communicated to a local antiquary in 1825, Sir Walter said: ‘It consisted of two flats above Mr Keith’s, and belonged to my father, Mr Walter Scott, Writer to the Signet; there I had the chance to be born, 15th August 1771. My father, soon after my birth, removed to George’s Square, and let the house in the College Wynd, first to Mr Dundas of Philipstoun, and afterwards to Mr William Keith, father of Sir Alexander Keith. It was purchased by the public, together with Mr Keith’s’ [the inferior floors], ‘and pulled down to make way for the new college.’

It appears, however, that, before Sir Walter could receive any impressions from the romantic scenery of the Old Town of Edinburgh, he was removed, on account of the delicacy of his health, to the country, and lived for a considerable period under the charge of his paternal grandfather at Sandyknow. This farm is situated upon high ground, near the bottom of Leader Water, and overlooks a large part of the vale of Tweed. In the immediate neighbourhood of the farm-house, upon a rocky foundation, stood the Border fortlet called Smailholm Tower, which possessed many features to attract the attention of the young poet. It was his10 early residence at this romantic spot that imparted an intense affection for the southern part of Scotland, to which he finally adjourned. Some account of the district which he so dearly loved may here properly be given.

THE LAND OF SCOTT.

The district which this mighty genius has appropriated as his own, may be described as restricted in a great measure to the counties of Roxburgh and Selkirk, the former of which is the central part of the frontier or Border of Scotland, noted of old for the warlike character of its inhabitants, and even, till a comparatively late period, for certain predatory habits, unlike anything that obtained at the same time, at least in the southern portion of Scotland. Though born in Edinburgh, Walter Scott was descended from Roxburghshire families, and was familiar in his early years with both the scenery and the inhabitants, and the history and traditions, of that romantic land. He was indeed fed with the legendary lore of the Borders as with a mother’s milk; and it was this, no doubt, which gave his mind so remarkable a taste for the manners of the middle ages, to the exclusion of all sympathy for either the ideas of the ancient classics, or the literature of modern manners. There was something additionally engaging to a mind like his in the poetical associations which have so long

rendered this region the very Arcadia of Scotland. The Tweed, flowing majestically from one end of it to the other; the Teviot, a scarcely less noble tributary; with all the lesser streams connected with these two—the Jed, the Gala, the Ettrick, the Yarrow, and the Quair—had, from the revival of Scottish poetry, been sung by11 unnumbered bards, many of whose names have perished, like flowers, from the face of the earth which they adorned. From all these associations mingled together, did the mind of this transcendent genius draw its first and its happiest inspiration.

The general character of this district of Scotland is pastoral. Here and there, along the banks of the streams, there are alluvial strips called haughs, all of which are finely cultivated; and the plough, in many places, has ascended the hill to a considerable height; but the land in general is a succession of pastoral eminences, which are either green to the top, or swathed in dusky heath, unless where a patch of young and green wood seeks to soften the climate and the soil. Much of the land still belongs to the Duke of Buccleuch, and other descendants of noted Border chiefs, and it annually supplies much of what both clothes and feeds the British population. Being little intruded upon by manufactures, or any other thing calculated to introduce new ideas, its population exhibit, in general, those primitive features of character which are so invariably found to characterise a pastoral people. Even where, in such cases as Hawick and Galashiels, manufactures have established an isolated seat, the people are hardly distinguishable, in simplicity and homely virtues, from the tenants

of the hills.