Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Bart.
Walter Scott to J. B. S. Morritt of Rokeby, 21 August 1816
“Abbotsford, 21st August, 1816.
“I have not had a moment’s kindly leisure to
answer your kind letter, and to tell how delighted I shall be to see you in
this least of all possible dwellings, but
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| 24 | LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. | |
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where we, nevertheless, can contrive a pilgrim’s
quarters and the warmest welcome for you and any friend of your journey;—if
young Stanley, so much the better. Now, as to the
important business with the which I have been occupied, you are to know we have
had our kind hostesses of Piccadilly upon a two months’ visit to us. We
owed them so much hospitality, that we were particularly anxious to make
Scotland agreeable to the good girls. But, alas! the wind has blown, and the
rain has fallen, in a style which beats all that ever I remembered. We
accomplished, with some difficulty, a visit to Loch Katrine and Loch Lomond,
and, by dint of the hospitality of Cambusmore and the Ross, we defied bad
weather, wet roads, and long walks. But the weather settled into regular
tempest, when we settled at Abbotsford; and, though the natives, accustomed to
bad weather (though not at such a time of year), contrived to brave the
extremities of the season, it only served to increase the dismay of our unlucky
visitors, who, accustomed only to Paris and London, expected fiacres at the Milestane Cross, and a pair
of oars at the Deadman’s Haugh. Add to this, a strong disposition to
commérage, when there
was no possibility of gratifying it, and a total indisposition to scenery or
rural amusements, which were all we had to offer—and you will pity both hosts
and guests. I have the gratification to think I fully supported the hospitality
of my country. I walked them to death. I talked them to death. I showed them
landscapes which the driving rain hardly permitted them to see, and told them
of feuds about which they cared as little as I do about their next door news in
Piccadilly. Yea, I even played at cards, and as I had Charlotte for a partner, so ran no risk of being scolded, I got
on pretty well. Still the weather was so execrable, that, as the old drunken
landlord used to say at Arroquhar, ‘I was perfectly ![]()
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ashamed of it;’ and, to
this moment, I wonder how my two friends fought it out so patiently as they
did. But the young people and the cottages formed considerable resources.
Yesterday they left us, deeply impressed with the conviction, which I can
hardly blame, that the sun never shone in Scotland,—which that noble luminary
seems disposed to confirm, by making this the first fair day we have seen this
month—so that his beams will greet them at Longtown, as if he were determined
to put Scotland to utter shame.
“In you I expect a guest of a different calibre; and
I think (barring downright rain) I can promise you some sport of one kind or
other. We have a good deal of game about us; and Walter, to whom I have resigned my gun and license, will be an
excellent attendant. He brought in six brace of moorfowl on the 12th, which had
(si fas est diceri) its own
effect in softening the minds of our guests towards this unhappy climate. In
other respects things look melancholy enough here. Corn is, however, rising;
and the poor have plenty of work, and wages which, though greatly inferior to
what they had when hands were scarce, assort perfectly well with the present
state of the markets. Most folks try to live as much on their own produce as
they can, by way of fighting off distress; and though speculating farmers and
landlords must suffer, I think the temporary ague-fit will, on the whole, be
advantageous to the country. It will check that inordinate and unbecoming
spirit of expense, or rather extravagance, which was poisoning all classes, and
bring us back to the sober virtues of our ancestors. It will also have the
effect of teaching the landed interest, that their connexion with their farmers
should be of a nature more intimate than that of mere payment and receipt of
rent, and that the largest offerer for a lease is often the person least
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red as a tenant. Above all, it will
complete the destruction of those execrable quacks, terming themselves
land-doctors, who professed, from a two days’ scamper over your estate,
to tell you its constitution,—in other words its value,—acre by acre. These
men, paid according to the golden hopes they held out, afforded by their
reports one principal means of deceiving both landlord and tenant, by setting
an ideal and extravagant value upon land, which seemed to entitle the one to
expect, and the other to offer, rent far beyond what any expectation formed by
either, upon their own acquaintance with the property, could rationally have
warranted. More than one landed gentleman has cursed, in my presence, the day
he ever consulted one of those empirics, whose prognostications induced him to
reject the offers of substantial men, practically acquainted with the locale. Ever, my dear Morritt, most truly yours,
Jane Nicolson (1755-1831)
Companion of Charlotte Carpenter prior to her marriage to Walter Scott. Lockhart's
account of her parentage appears to be inaccurate.
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.”
