Part 17

Here it was that he led his happy boyhood, in the midst of that beautiful family life which he has so attractively described: the grave, careful, but kind father; the sweet, sensible, ladylike, and religious mother; the three brothers, various in their fortunes as in their dispositions; and that one unfortunate sister, Anne Scott, whom he terms from her cradle the butt for mischance to shoot arrows at. She who had her hand caught by the iron gate leading into the area of the square in a high wind, and nearly crushed to pieces; who next fell into a pond, and narrowly escaped drowning; and was finally, at six years of age, so burned by her cap taking fire, that she soon after died. Here, as school-boy, college student, and law student, he made his early friendships, often to continue for life, with John Irvine; George Abercrombie, son of the famous general, and now Lord Abercrombie; William Clerk, afterward of Eldin, son of Sir John Clerk, of Pennycuick-house; Adam Fergusson, the son of the celebrated Professor Fergusson; the present Earl of Selkirk, David Boyle, present lord justice clerk, Lord Jeffrey, Mr. Claude Russell, Sir William Rae, David Monypenny, afterward Lord Pitmilly; Sir Archibald Campbell of Succoth, bart.; the Earl of Dalhousie, George Cranstoun (Lord Corehouse), John James Edmonstone, of Newton; Patrick Murray, of Simprim; Sir Patrick Murray, of Ochtertyre; David Douglas (Lord Preston); Thomas Thompson, the celebrated legal antiquary; William Erskine (Lord Kinedder); Alexander Frazer Tytler (Lord Woodhouselee), and other celebrated men, with many of whom he was connected in a literary club.

Here it was that, with one intimate or another, and sometimes in a jovial troop, he set out on those country excursions which were to render him so affluent in knowledge of life and varied character; commencing with their almost daily strolls about Arthur's Seat and Salisbury Crags, repeating poetry and ballads; then to Preston-Pans, Pennycuick, and so extending their rambles to Roslyn, Lasswade, the Pentlands, down into Roxburghshire, into Fife, to Flodden, Chevy Chase, Otterburn, and many another scene of border renown, Liddesdale being, as we have stated, one of the most fascinating; and finally away into the Highlands, where, as the attorney's clerk, his business led him among those old Highland chiefs who had been out in the '15 and '45, and where the veteran Invernahyle set him on fire with his stories of Rob Roy, Mar, and Prince Charlie; and where the Baron of Bradwardine and Tullyveolan, and all the scenes of Waverley, and others of his Scotch romances, were impressed on his soul forever. Here it was, too, that he had for tutor that good-hearted, but formal clergyman, Mr. Mitchell, who was afterward so startled when Sir Walter, calling on him at his manse in Montrose, told him he was "collecting stories of fairies, witches, and ghosts:" "intelligence," said the pious old presbyterian minister, "which proved to me an electric shock;" adding, that moreover, "these ideal beings, the subjects of his inquiry," were not objects on which he had himself wasted his time. And here, finally, it was that, in the ballads he read,--as in that of Cumnor-hall, the germ of Kenilworth, of which he used as a boy to be continually repeating the first verse,

"The dews of summer night did fall-- The moon, sweet regent of the sky, Silvered the walls of Cumnor-hall, And many an oak that grew thereby;--"

in the lays of Tasso, Ariosto, etc., he laid up so much of the food of future romance, and where Edie Ochiltrees and Dugald Dalgettys were crossing his everyday path.

It was here that occurred that singular scene, in which his mother bringing in a cup of coffee to a gentleman who was transacting business with her husband, when the stranger was gone, Mr. Scott told his wife that this man was Murray of Broughton, who had been a traitor to Prince Charles Stuart; and saying that his lip should never touch the cup which a traitor had drank out of, flung it out of the window. The saucer, however, being preserved, was secured by Scott, and became a conspicuous object in his juvenile museum.

Such to Scott was No. 25, George's-square. Is it not the secret charm of these old and precious associations which has recently led his old and most intimate friend, Sir Adam Fergusson, to take a house in this square, and within, I believe, one door of Scott's old residence?

We may dismiss in a few words No. 19, South Castle-street, the house where he occupied a flat immediately on his marriage, and the Parliament-house, where he sat, as a clerk of session, and the _Outer house_, where he might, in his earlier career, be seen often making his acquaintance merry over his stories;--these places will always be viewed with interest by strangers: but it is his house, 39, North Castle-street, around which gather the most lively associations connected with his mature life in Edinburgh.

Here it was that he lived when in town, from soon after his marriage till the great break up of his affairs in 1826. Here a great portion of the best of his life was passed. Here he lived, enjoyed, worked, saw his friends, and felt, in the midst of his happy family, the sense of the great name and affection that he had won among his fellow-men. It is evident, from what he says in his journal, when it had to be sold, that he was greatly attached to it. It was his pride very often when he took strangers home with him, to stop at the crossing of George-street, and point out to them the beauty and airiness of the situation. In one direction was St. George's Church, in another the whole length of George-street, with the monuments of Pitt and Dundas. In one direction, the castle on its commanding rock, in the other the frith of Forth, and the shores of Fife beyond. It was in this house that "the vision of the hand" was seen from a neighboring one in George-street, which is related in Lockhart's Life. A party was met in this house which was situated near to, and at right angles with, George-street. "It was a party," says the relator, "of very young persons, most of them, like Menzies and myself, destined for the bar of Scotland. The weather being hot, we adjourned to a library, which had one large window looking northward. After carousing here an hour or more, I observed that a shade had come over the aspect of my friend, who happened to be placed immediately opposite to myself, and said something that intimated a fear of his being unwell. 'No,' said he, 'I shall be well enough presently, if you will only let me sit where you are, and take my chair; for there is a confounded hand in sight of me here, which has often bothered me before, and now it won't let me fill my glass with a goodwill.' I rose to change places with him accordingly, and he pointed out to me this hand, which, like the writing on Belshazzar's wall, disturbed his hour of hilarity. 'Since we sat down,' said he, 'I have been watching it--it fascinates my eye--it never stops--page after page is finished and thrown on that heap of manuscript, and still it goes on unwearied, and so it will be till candles are brought in, and God knows how long after that. It is the same every night--I can't stand a sight of it when I am not at my books.' 'Some stupid, dogged, engrossing clerk, probably,' exclaimed myself, or some other giddy youth of our society. 'No, boys,' said our host, 'I well know what hand it is--'tis Sir Walter Scott's.' This was the hand that in the evenings of three summer weeks, wrote the two last volumes of Waverley."

I went with Mr. Robert Chambers into this house to get a sight of this window, but some back wall or other had been built up and shut out the view. In the next house, occupied I think by a tailor, we, however, obtained the desired sight of this window on the second story at the back of Scott's house, and could very well have seen any hand at work in the same situation. The house is now inhabited by Professor Napier, the editor of the Edinburgh Review.

The houses and places of business of the Ballantynes and Constable are not devoid of interest, as connected with Scott. In all these he was frequently for business or dining. The place of business of Constable, was at one time that which is now the Crown hotel, at the east end of Princes-street. That which is now the commercial room, or the first floor, was Constable's book-dépôt, and where he sat a good deal; and a door near the window, looking out toward the Register Office, entered a lesser room, now altered, where Scott used to go and write occasionally. The private residence of Constable was at Palton, six or seven miles from Edinburgh. James Ballantyne's was in St. John-street, a row of good, old-fashioned, and spacious houses, adjoining the Canongate and Holyrood, and at no great distance from his printing establishment. John Ballantyne's auction-rooms were in Hanover-street, and his country house, styled by him Harmony-hall, was near the frith of Forth by Trinity. Of both the private and convivial entertainments at these places we have full accounts given by Lockhart. Sometimes, he says, Scott was there alone with only two or three intimate friends; at others, there were great and jovial dinners, and that all guests with whom Scott did not wish to be burdened were feasted here by John Ballantyne, in splendid style; and many were the scenes of uproarious merriment amid his "perfumed conversations," and over the Parisian delicacies of the repast.

But, in fact, the buildings and sites in and around Edinburgh, with which associations of Scott are connected, are innumerable, almost universal. His Marmion, his Heart of Mid-Lothian, his Tales of the Canongate, have peopled almost every part of the city and neighborhood with the vivid characters of his creation. The Canongate, the Cowgate, the Nether and West Bows, the Grass-market, the site of the old Tolbooth, Holyrood, the Park, Muschat's cairn, Salisbury-craig, Davie Dean's cottage, Liberton, the abode of Dominie Butler, Craigmillar Castle, and a thousand other places, are all alive with them. We are astonished, on visiting Edinburgh, to find how much more intense is the interest cast over different spots by his genius than by ordinary history.

A superb monument to his memory, a lofty and peculiarly beautiful gothic cross, now stands in Princes-street, within which stands his statue.

The first place in the country which Scott resided at, is the scene of a sojourn at a very early age, and of subsequent visits--Sandy-knowe, near Kelso. In his autobiography he gives a most picturesque account of his life here. He says that it was here that he came soon after the commencement of his lameness, which was attributed to a fever, consequent on severe teething when he was about eighteen months old. He dates his first consciousness of life from this place. He came here to be strengthened by country air, and was suffered to scramble about among the crags to his heart's content. His father, Walter Scott, was the first of his family who entered on a town life. His grandfather, Robert Scott, then very old, was living at this Sandy-knowe. The place is some five or six miles from Kelso. The spot lies high, and is still very wild, but in the time of Scott's childhood would be far wilder. It was then surrounded, far and wide, with brown moorlands. These are now, for the most part, reclaimed by the plough; but the country is open, naked, and solitary. The old tower of Smailholm, which stands on the spot, is seen afar off as a tall, square, and stern old border keep. In his preface to the Eve of St. John, Scott says, "The circuit of the outer court being defended on three sides by a precipice and a morass, is accessible only from the west by a steep and rocky path. The apartments, as usual in a border keep or fortress, are placed one above another, and communicate by a narrow stair. On the roof are two bartizans, or platforms, for defense or pleasure. The inner door of the tower is wood, the outer an iron grate; the distance between them being nine feet, the thickness, namely, of the walls. Among the crags by which it is surrounded, one more eminent is called the _Watchfold_; and is said to have been the station of a beacon in the times of war with England."

Stern and steadfast as is this old tower, being, as Scott himself says, nine feet thick in the wall, each room arched with stone, and the roof an arch of stone, with other stones piled into a steep ridge upon it; and being built of the iron-like whinstone of the rocks around, it seems as if it were a solid and time-proof portion of the crag on which it stands. The windows are small holes, and the feeling of grim strength which it gives you is intense. Since Scott's day, the inner door and the outer iron grate are gone. The place is open, and the cattle and the winds make it their resort. All around the black crags start out of the ground; it is an iron wilderness. There are a few laborious cotters just below it, and not far off is the spot where stood the old house of Scott's grandfather, a good modern farmhouse and its buildings. This savage and solitary monument of the ages of feud and bloodshed, stands no longer part of a waste where

"The bittern clamored from the moss, The wind blew loud and shrill,"

but in the midst of a well cultivated corn farm, where the farmer looks with a jealous eye on visitors, wondering what they can want with the naked old keep, and complaining that they leave his gates open. He had been thus venting his chagrin to the driver of my chaise, and wishing the tower were down--a stiff business to accomplish--but withdrew into his house at my approach.

Sterile and bare as is this wild scene, Scott dates from it, and no doubt correctly, his deep love of nature and ballad romance. In the Introduction to the third canto of Marmion, he thus refers to it:--

"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 honeysuckle loved to crawl Up the low crag and ruined wall. I deemed such nooks the sweetest shade The sun in all his rounds surveyed; And still I thought the shattered tower The mightiest work of human power: And marveled as the aged hind With some strange tale bewitched my mind-- Of forayers, who, with headlong force, Down that same strength had spurred their horse, Their southern rapine to renew, Far in the distant Cheviots blue; And home returning, filled the hall With revel, wassail-rout, and brawl. Methought that still with trump and clang The gateway's broken arches rang; Methought grim features, seamed with scars, Glanced through the window's rusty bars. And even, by the winter hearth Old tales I heard of woe and mirth, Of lover's slights, of lady's charms: Of witches' spells, of warriors' arms; Of patriot battles won of old By Wallace wight and Bruce the bold; Of 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 battle o'er; Pebbles and shells in order laid, The mimic works of war displayed; And onward still the Scottish lion bore, And still the scattered southron fled before."

Here we have the elements of Waverley at work in the child of four or five years old. In fact, the years that he spent here were crowded with the impressions of romance and the excitement of the imagination. He was surrounded by singular and picturesque characters. The recluse old clergyman;--old MacDougal, of Markstoun, in his little laced cocked hat, embroidered scarlet waistcoat, light-colored coat, and white hair tied military fashion, kneeling on the carpet before the child, and drawing his watch along to induce him to follow it. Old Ormistoun, the herdsman, that used to carry him out into the moorlands, telling him all sorts of stories, and blew his whistle when the nurse was to fetch him home. The nurse herself, who went mad, and to escape from this solitude, confessed that she had carried the child up among the crags, under a temptation of the devil, to cut his throat with her scissors, and bury him in the moss; and was therefore dismissed at once, but found to be a maniac. All these things were certain of sinking deep into the child's mind, amid the solitude and wildness of the place; but all this time too he was stuffed daily with all sorts of border and other ballads: Watt of Harden, Wight Willie of Aikwood, Jamie Telfer of the fair Dodhead, Hardyknute, and the like; and the stories of the cruelties practiced on the rebels at Carlisle, and in the Highlands, after the battle of Culloden, related to him by a farmer of Yethyn who had witnessed them--"tragic tales which," said Scott, "made so great an impression upon me." In fact, here again were future materials of Waverley. Before quitting the stern old tower of Smailholm, and Sandy-knowe, why so called, and why not rather Whinstone-knowe, it were difficult to say,--we may, in the eloquent words of Mr. Lockhart, point out the celebrated scenes which lie in view from it. "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 at 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 Erceldoun himself inhabited, 'The Broom of the Cowdenknowes,' the pastoral valley of the Leader, and the black wilderness of Lammermoor. To the eastward, the desolate grandeur of Hume Castle breaks the horizon, as the eye travels toward the range of the Cheviot. A few miles westward, Melrose, 'like some tall rock with lichens gray,' appears clasped amid 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."

The next place which became a haunt of the boyhood of Scott was Kelso. Here he had an uncle, Captain Robert Scott, and an aunt, Miss Janet Scott, under whose care he had spent the latter part of his time at Sandy-knowe. Scott, as I have observed, was one of the most fortunate men that ever lived in the circumstances of his early life, in which every possible event which could prepare him for the office of a great and original novelist concurred, as if by appointment of Providence. He was led to visit and explore all the most beautiful scenery of his country--the Borders, the Highlands, those around Edinburgh; and in every place at that time existed multitudes of singular characters, many of them still retaining the quaint garb and habits of a former day. We have seen that his school and college fellows comprised almost all the afterward distinguished men of their age, no trivial advantage to him in his own progress. At Sandy-knowe, beside the characters we have referred to, his old grandfather and grandmother, and their quiet life--"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 elbows-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." He was away sometimes at Prestonpans, and there, as fortune would have it, for he must be enriched with all such treasure, he saw in George Constable the original of Monkbarns, and also the original Dalgetty. Kelso now added to the number of his original characters, and scenes for future painting. Miss Janet Scott lived, he tells us, in a small house in a large garden to the eastward of the church-yard of Kelso, which extended down to the Tweed. This fine old garden of seven or eight acres, had winding walks, mounds, and a banqueting house. It was laid out in the old style, with high pleached hornbeam hedges, and had a fine plane-tree. In many parts of the garden were fine yews and other trees, and there was also a goodly old orchard. Here, as in a very paradise, he used to read and devour heaps of poetry. Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered, Percy's Reliques, and the works of Richardson, Fielding, Smollett, Mackenzie, and other of the great novelists. The features of this garden remained deeply imprinted in his mind, and have been reproduced in different descriptions of his works. Like the garden of Eden itself this charming old garden has now vanished. Indeed, he himself relates with what chagrin he found, on revisiting the place many years afterward, the good old plane-tree gone, the hedges pulled up, and the bearing trees felled! I searched for some trace of it on my visit there in vain, though its locality is so well defined. There was, however, the old grammar-school not far off to which he used to go, and where he found, in Lancelot Whale, the prototype of Dominie Sampson, and in two of the boys, his future printers, James and John Ballantyne. The neighborhood of Kelso, the town itself, quiet and old-fashioned, was well calculated to charm a boy of his dreaming and poetry-absorbing age. The Tweed here is a fine, broad stream, the banks are steep and magnificently hung with splendid woods. The adjoining park and old castle, the ruins of the fine abbey in the town, and charming walks by the Tweed or the Teviot, which here unite, with their occasional broad, sandy beach, and anglers wading in huge boots; all made their delightful impressions upon him. He speaks with rapture of the long walks along the river with John Ballantyne, repeating poetry and telling stories. His uncle, Captain Robert Scott, lived somewhat farther out on the same side as his aunt, at a villa called Rosebank, which still stands unchanged amid much fine lofty timber, and with its lawn running down to the Tweed.

Kelso was the last country abode of the boyhood of Scott. Edinburgh, with his occasional flights into the Highlands, and his _raids_ into Liddesdale, kept him till his manhood. That found him with his blithe little wife in his cottage at Lasswade.

Lasswade is a lovely neighborhood. It is thrown up with lofty ridges all finely wooded. The country there is rich, and the noble woods, the fine views down into the fertile valleys, and the Esk coming sounding along its channel from Rosslyn and Hawthornden, make it very charming. It is in the immediate neighborhood not only of Rosslyn with its beautiful chapel, and the classic cliffs and woods of Hawthornden, but of Dalkeith; and Lord Melville's park is at Lasswade itself.