Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Bart.
Walter Scott to Joanna Baillie, [4 August 1811]
“My dreams about my cottage go on; of about a
hundred acres I have manfully resolved to plant from ![]()
| LETTER TO MISS BAILLIE—AUG. 1811. | 361 |
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sixty to seventy; as to my scale of
dwelling, why, you shall see my plan when I have adjusted it. My present
intention is to have only two spare bed-rooms, with dressing-rooms, each of
which will on a pinch have a couch bed; but I cannot relinquish my Border
principle of accommodating all the cousins and duniwastles, who will rather sleep on chairs, and on the floor, and
in the hay-loft, than be absent when folks are gathered together; and truly I
used to think Ashestiel was very much like the tent of Paribanou, in the Arabian Nights, that suited alike all numbers
of company equally; ten people fill it at any time, and I remember its lodging
thirty-two without any complaint. As for the go-about-folks, they generally pay
their score one way or other; for you who are always in the way of seeing, and
commanding, and selecting your society, are too fastidious to understand how a
dearth of news may make any body welcome that can tell one the current report
of the day. If it is any pleasure to these stragglers to say I made them
welcome as strangers, I am sure that costs me nothing—only I deprecate
publication, and am now the less afraid of it that I think scarce any
bookseller will be desperate enough to print a new Scottish tour. Besides, one
has the pleasure to tell over all the stories that have bored your friends a
dozen of times, with some degree of propriety. In short, I think, like a true
Scotchman, that a stranger, unless he is very unpleasant indeed, usually brings
a title to a welcome along with him; and to confess the truth, I do a little
envy my old friend Abouhassan his walks on
the bridge of Bagdad, and evening conversations, and suppers with the guests
whom he was never to see again in his life: he never fell into a scrape till he
met with the Caliph—and, thank God, no Caliphs frequent the brigg of Melrose,
which will be my nearest Rialto at Abbotsford.
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LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. |
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“I never heard of a stranger that utterly baffled
all efforts to engage him in conversation, excepting one whom an acquaintance
of mine met in a stage coach. My friend,* who piqued himself on his talents for
conversation, assailed this tortoise on all hands, but in vain, and at length
descended to expostulation. ‘I have talked to you, my friend, on all
the ordinary subjects—literature, farming, merchandise—gaming, game-laws,
horse-races—suits at law politics, and swindling, and blasphemy, and
philosophy—is there any one subject that you will favour me by opening
upon?’ The wight writhed his countenance into a grin
‘Sir,’ said he, ‘can you say any thing clever
about bend leather?’ There, I own, I
should have been as much non-plussed as my acquaintance; but upon any less
abstruse subject, I think, in general, something may be made of a stranger,
worthy of his clean sheets, and beef-steak, and glass of port. You, indeed, my
dear friend, may suffer a little for me, as I should for you, when such a
fortuitous acquaintance talks of the intercourse arising from our meeting as
any thing beyond the effect of chance and civility: but these braggings break
no bones, and are always a compliment to the person of whom the discourse is
held, though the narrator means it to himself; for no one can suppose the
affectation of intimacy can be assumed unless from an idea that it exalts the
person who brags of it. My little folks are well, and I am performing the
painful duty of hearing my little boy his Latin lesson every morning; painful,
because my knowledge of the language is more familiar than grammatical, and
because little Walter has a disconsolate
yawn at intervals which is quite irresistible, and has nearly cost me a
dislocation of my jaws.”
Sir Walter Scott, second baronet (1801-1847)
The elder son and heir of Sir Walter Scott; he was cornet in the 18th Hussars (1816),
captain (1825), lieut.-col. (1839). In the words of Maria Edgeworth, he was
“excessively shy, very handsome, not at all literary.”
