Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth/Volume 2/Letter 36

by Maria Edgeworth

To MRS. RUXTON.

EDINBURGH, 32 ABERCROMBY PLACE,

June 8, 1823.

You have had our history up to Kinneil House. Mr. and Miss Stewart accompanied us some miles on our road to show us the palace of Linlithgow—very interesting to see, but not to describe. The drive from Linlithgow to Edinburgh is nothing extraordinary, but the road approaching the city is grand, and the first view of the castle and "mine own romantic town" delighted my companions; the day was fine and they were sitting outside on the barouche seat—a seat which you, my dear aunt, would not have envied them with all their fine prospects. By this approach to Edinburgh there are no suburbs; you drive at once through magnificent broad streets and fine squares. All the houses are of stone, darker than the Ardbraccan stone, and of a kind that is little injured by weather or time. Margaret Alison^[1] had taken lodgings for us in Abercromby Place—finely built, with hanging shrubbery garden, and the house as delightful as the situation. As soon as we had unpacked and arranged our things the evening of our arrival, we walked, about ten minutes' distance from us, to our dear old friends, the Alisons. We found them shawled and bonneted, just coming to see us. Mr. Alison and Sir Walter Scott had settled that we should dine the first day after our arrival with Mr. Alison, which was just what we wished; but on our return home we found a note from Sir Walter:

"DEAR MISS EDGEWORTH,

"I have just received your kind note, just when I had persuaded myself it was most likely I should see you in person or hear of your arrival. Mr. Alison writes to me you are engaged to dine with him to-morrow, which puts Roslin out of the question for that day, as it might keep you late. On Sunday I hope you will join our family-party at five, and on Monday I have asked one or two of the Northern Lights on purpose to meet you. I should be engrossing at any time, but we shall be more disposed to be so just now, because on the 12th I am under the necessity of going to a different kingdom (only the kingdom of Fife) for a day or two. To-morrow, if it is quite agreeable, I will wait on you about twelve, and hope you will permit me to show you some of our improvements.

"I am always,

"Most respectfully yours,

"WALTER SCOTT.

"EDINBURGH, Friday.

"Postscript.—Our old family coach is licensed to carry six; so take no care on that score. I enclose Mr. Alison's note; truly sorry I could not accept the invitation it contains.

"Postscript.—My wife insists I shall add that the Laird of Staffa promised to look in on us this evening at eight or nine, for the purpose of letting us hear one of his clansmen sing some Highland boat-songs and the like, and that if you will come, as the Irish should to the Scotch, without any ceremony, you will hear what is perhaps more curious than mellifluous. The man returns to the isles to-morrow. There are no strangers with us; no party; none but all our own family and two old friends. Moreover, all our woman-kind have been calling at Gibbs's hotel, so if you are not really tired and late, you have not even pride, the ladies' last defence, to oppose to this request. But, above all, do not fatigue yourself and the young ladies. No dressing to be thought of."

Ten o'clock struck as I read the note; we were tired—we were not fit to be seen; but I thought it right to accept "Walter Scott's" cordial invitation; sent for a hackney coach, and just as we were, without dressing, went. As the coach stopped, we saw the hall lighted, and the moment the door opened, heard the joyous sounds of loud singing. Three servants—"The Miss Edgeworths" sounded from hall to landing-place, and as I paused for a moment in the anteroom, I heard the first sound of Walter Scott's voice—"The Miss Edgeworths come."

The room was lighted by only one globe lamp. A circle were singing loud and beating time—all stopped in an instant, and Walter Scott in the most cordial and courteous manner stepped forward to welcome us: "Miss Edgeworth, this is so kind of you!"

My first impression was, that he was neither so large, nor so heavy in appearance as I had been led to expect by description, prints, bust, and picture. He is more lame than I expected, but not unwieldy; his countenance, even by the uncertain light in which I first saw it, pleased me much, benevolent, and full of genius without the slightest effort at expression; delightfully natural, as if he did not know he was Walter Scott or the Great Unknown of the North, as if he only thought of making others happy.^[2] After naming to us "Lady Scott, Staffa, my daughter Lockhart, Sophia, another daughter Anne, my son, my son-in-law Lockhart," just in the broken circle as they then stood, and showing me that only his family and two friends, Mr. Clark and Mr. Sharpe, were present, he sat down for a minute beside me on a low sofa, and on my saying, "Do not let us interrupt what was going on," he immediately rose and begged Staffa to bid his boatman strike up again. "Will you then join in the circle with us?" he put the end of a silk handkerchief into my hand, and others into my sisters'; they held by these handkerchiefs all in their circle again, and the boatman began to roar out a Gaelic song, to which they all stamped in time and repeated the chorus which, as far as I could hear, sounded like "At am Vaun! At am Vaun!" frequently repeated with prodigious enthusiasm. In another I could make out no intelligible sound but "Bar! bar! bar!" But the boatman's dark eyes were ready to start out of his head with rapture as he sung and stamped, and shook the handkerchief on each side, and the circle imitated.

Lady Scott is so exactly what I had heard her described, that it seemed as if we had seen her before. She must have been very handsome—French dark large eyes; civil and good-natured. Supper at a round table, a family supper, with attention to us, just sufficient and no more. The impression left on my mind this night was, that Walter Scott is one of the best-bred men I ever saw, with all the exquisite politeness which he knows so well how to describe, which is of no particular school or country, but which is of all countries, the politeness which arises from good and quick sense and feeling, which seems to know by instinct the characters of others, to see what will please, and put all his guests at their ease. As I sat beside him at supper, I could not believe he was a stranger, and forgot he was a great man. Mr. Lockhart is very handsome, quite unlike his picture in Peter's Letters.

When we wakened in the morning, the whole scene of the preceding night seemed like a dream; however, at twelve came the real Lady Scott, and we called for Scott at the Parliament House, who came out of the Courts with joyous face as if he had nothing on earth to do or to think of, but to show us Edinburgh. Seeming to enjoy it all as much as we could, he carried us to Parliament House—Advocates' Library, Castle, and Holyrood House. His conversation all the time better than anything we could see, full of à-propos anecdote, historic, serious or comic, just as occasion called for it, and all with a bon-homie, and an ease that made us forget it was any trouble even to his lameness to mount flights of eternal stairs. Chantrey's statues of Lord Melville and President Blair are admirable. There is another by Roubillac, of Duncan Forbes, which is excellent. Scott is enthusiastic about the beauties of Edinburgh, and well he may be, the most magnificent as well as the most romantic of cities.

We dined with the dear good Alisons. Mr. Alison met me at the drawing-room door, took me in his arms and gave me a hearty hug. I do not think he is much altered, only that his locks are silvered over. At this dinner were, besides his two sons and two daughters, and Mrs. Alison, Mr. and Mrs. Skene. In one of Scott's introductions to Marmion you will find this Mr. Skene, Mr. Hope, the Scotch Solicitor-General (it is curious the Solicitor-Generals of Scotland and Ireland should be Hope and Joy!), Dr. Brewster, and Lord Meadowbank, and Mrs. Maconachie, his wife. Mr. Alison wanted me to sit beside everybody, and I wanted to sit by him, and this I accomplished; on the other side was Mr. Hope, whose head and character you will find in Peter's Letters: he was very entertaining. Sophy sat beside Dr. Brewster, and had a great deal of conversation with him.

Next day, Sunday, went to hear Mr. Alison; his fine voice but little altered. To me he appears the best preacher I have ever heard. Dined at Scott's; only his own family, his friend Skene, his wife and daughter, and Sir Henry Stewart; I sat beside Scott; I dare not attempt at this moment even to think of any of the anecdotes he told, the fragments of poetry he repeated, or the observations on national character he made, lest I should be tempted to write some of them for you, and should never end this letter, which must be ended some time or other. His strong affection for his early friends and his country gives a power and a charm to his conversation, which cannot be given by the polish of the London world and by the habit of literary conversation.

Quentin Durward was lying on the table. Mrs. Skene took it up and said, "This is really too barefaced." Scott, when pointing to the hospital built by Heriot, said, "That was built by one Heriot, you know, the jeweller, in Charles the Second's time."

There was an arch simplicity in his look, at which we could hardly forbear laughing.

June 23.

I remember, my dearest aunt, how fond you used to be of the song of Roslin Castle, and how fond my father used to be of it, from having heard you sing it when you were young. I think you charged me to see Roslin if ever I came to Scotland; this day I have seen it with Walter Scott. It is about seven miles from Edinburgh, I wish it had been twice as far; Scott was so entertaining and agreeable during the drive there and back again. The castle is an ugly old ruin, not picturesque, but the chapel is most beautiful, altogether the most beautiful florid Gothic I ever saw. There is infinite variety in the details of the ornaments, and yet such a unity in the whole design and appearance that we admire at once the taste and the ingenuity of the architect. I wished for you, my dear aunt, continually during parts of the walk by the river and through the woods—not during the whole, for it would have been much too long. How Walter Scott can find time to write all he writes I cannot conceive, he appears to have nothing to think of but to be amusing, and he never tires, though he is so entertaining—he far surpasses my expectation.

Mr. Lockhart is reserved and silent, but he appears to have much sensibility under this reserve. Mrs. Lockhart is very pleasing; a slight elegant figure and graceful simplicity of manner, perfectly natural. There is something most winning in her affectionate manner to her father: he dotes upon her.

To MISS LUCY EDGEWORTH.

CALLANDER, June 20, 1823.

Here we are! I can hardly believe we are really at the place we have so long wished to see: we have really been on Loch Katrine. We were fortunate in the day; it was neither too hot, nor too cold, nor too windy, nor too anything.

The lake was quite as beautiful as I expected, but that is telling you nothing, as you cannot know how much I expected. Sophy has made some memorandum sketches for home, though we are well aware that neither pen nor pencil can bring before you the reality. William^[3] says he does not, however, fear for Killarney, even after our having seen this. Here are no arbutus, but plenty of soft birch, and twinkling aspen, and dark oak. On one side of the lake the wood has been within these few years cut down. Walter Scott sent to offer the proprietor £500 for the trees on one spot, if he would spare them; but the offer came two days too late; the trees were stripped of their bark before his messenger arrived. To us, who never saw this rock covered with trees, it appeared grand in its bare boldness and in striking contrast to the wooded island opposite. Tell Fanny that, upon the whole, I think Farnham lakes as beautiful as Loch Katrine; as to mere beauty, perhaps superior: but where is the lake of our own, or any other times, that has such delightful power over the imagination by the recollections it raises? As we were rowed along, our boatman, happily our only guide, named to us the points we most wished to see; quietly named them, without being asked, and seemingly with a full belief that he was telling us plain facts, without any flowers of speech. "There's the place on that rock, see yonder, where the king blew his horn." "And there's the place where the Lady of the Lake landed." "And there is the Silver Strand, where you see the white pebbles in the little bay yonder."

He landed us just at the spot where the lady

From underneath an aged oak,

That slanted from the islet rock,

shot her little skiff to the silver strand on the opposite side. When William asked him if the king's dead horse had been found, he smiled, and said he only knew that bones had been found near where the king's horse died, but he could not be sure that they were the bones of King James's good steed. However, he seemed quite as clear of the existence of the Lady of the Lake, and of all her adventures, as of the existence of Benledi and Benvenue, and the Trossachs. He showed us the place on the mountain of Benvenue, where formerly there was no means of ascent but by the ladders of broom and hazel twigs, where the king climbed,

with footing nice,

A far-projecting precipice.

At the inn the mistress of the house lent me a copy of the Lady of the Lake, which I took out with me and read while we were going to the lake, and while Sophy was drawing. We saw an eagle hovering, and, moreover, Sophy spied some tiny sea-larks flitting close to the shore, and making their little, faint cry. Returning, we marked the place where the armed Highlanders started up from the furzebrake before King James, when Roderic Dhu sounded his horn, and we settled which was the spot at

Clan Alpine's outmost guard,

where Roderic Dhu's safe conduct ceased, and where the king and he had their combat. I forgot to mention a little incident, which, though very trifling, struck me at the moment. As I was walking on by myself on the road by the river-side leading to the lake, I came up to a Highlander who was stretched on the grass under a bush, while two little boys in tartan caps were playing beside him. I stopped to talk to the children, showed them my watch, and, holding it to their ears, asked if they had ever seen the inside of a watch. They did not answer, but they did not seem surprised, nor were they in the least shy. I asked the man if they were his children.

"Mine! oh no! they are the sons of Glengyle—the Laird of Glengyle, he who lives at the upper end of the lake yonder—McGreggor, that is, the McGreggor, the chief of the McGreggor clan."

Rob Roy and his wife and children rose up before my imagination. Times have finely changed. It may be a satisfaction to you, and all who admire Rob Roy, to know that his burial-place is in a pretty, peaceful green valley, where none will disturb him; and all will remember him for ages, thanks to Walter Scott, a man he never kenned of, nor any of his second-sighted seers. By the bye, Harriet on our journey read Rob Roy to me, and I liked it ten times better than at the first reading. My eagerness for the story being satisfied, I could stop to admire the beauty of the writing: this happens to many, I believe, on a second perusal of Scott's works.

FINISHED AT TYNDRUM.

Very good inn at Callander, and another at Loch Katrine—both raised by the genius of Scott as surely and almost as quickly as the slave of the lamp raises the palace of Aladdin. We spent one day and part of another at Callander and Loch Katrine, and yesterday went to, and slept at, Killin, along a very beautiful, fine, wild, romantic road. At Killin took a very pretty walk before tea, of about two miles and a half, and back again, to see a waterfall, which fully answered our expectations: you see, I am very strong. I had taken another walk in the morning to see the Bridge of Brackland, another beautiful waterfall, with a six-inch bridge over a chasm of rocks, which looked as if they had been built together to imitate nature.

We are reading Reginald Dalton, and like it very much, the second volume especially, which will be very useful, I think, and is very interesting. I am sure Mr. Lockhart describes his own wife's singing when he describes Ellen's.

We hope to reach King's House to-night, and at Inverness we hope to find letters from home. We are all well and happy, and this I am sure is the most agreeable thing I can end with.

To MISS RUXTON.

INVERNESS, BENNET'S HOTEL, July 3, 1823.

I sent a shabby note to my aunt some days ago, merely to tell her that we had seen Roslin; and Sophy wrote from Fort William of our visit to Fern Tower: good house, fine place; Sir David Baird a fine old soldier, without an arm, but with a heart and a head: warm temper, as eager about every object, great or small, as a boy of fifteen. He swallows me, though an authoress, wonderful well.

Our Highland tour has afforded me and my companions great pleasure; Sophy has enjoyed it thoroughly. William has had a number of objects in his own line to interest him. From Fort William, which is close to Ben Nevis, the highest mountain in Britain, we went to see a natural or artificial curiosity called the Parallel Roads. On each side of a valley called Glenroy, through which the river Roy runs, there appear several lines of terraces at different heights, corresponding to each other on each side of the valley at the same height. These terrace-roads are not quite horizontal; they slope a little from the mountains. The learned are at this moment fighting, in writing, much about these roads. Some will have it that, in the days of Fingal, the Fingalians made them for hunting-roads, to lie in ambush and shoot the deer from these long lines. Others suppose that the roads were made by the subsiding of a lake, which at different periods sank in this valley, and at last made its way out. The roads, however made, are well worth seeing. We had a most agreeable guide, not a professed guide, but a Highlander of the Macintosh clan, an enthusiast for the beauties of his own country, and, like the Swiss Chamouni guides, quite a well-informed and, moreover, a fine-looking man, with an air of active, graceful independence; of whom it might be said or sung, "He's clever in his walking." He spoke English correctly, but as a foreign language, with book choice of expressions; no colloquial or vulgar phrases. He often seemed to take time to translate his thoughts from the Gaelic into English. He knew Scott's works, Rob Roy especially, and knew all the theories about the Parallel Roads, and explained them sensibly; and gave us accounts of the old family feuds between his own Macintosh clan and the Macdonalds, pointing to places where battles were fought, with a zeal which proved the feudal spirit still lives in its ashes. When he found we were Irish, he turned to me, and all reserve vanishing from his countenance, with brightening eyes he said, as he laid his hand on his breast, "And you are Irish! Now I know that, I would do ten times as much for you if I could than when I thought you were Southerns or English. We think the Irish have, like ourselves, more spirit." He talked of Ossian, and said the English could not give the force of the original Gaelic. He sang a Gaelic song for us, to a tune like "St. Patrick's Day in the Morning." He called St. Patrick Phaedrig, by which name I did not recognise him; and our Highlander exclaimed, "Don't you know your own saint?" Sophy sang the tune for him, with which he was charmed; and when he heard William call her Sophy, he said to himself, "Sophia Western."

The next day we took a beautiful walk to the territory and near the residence of Lochiel, through a wood where groups of clansmen and clanswomen were barking trees that had been cut down; and the faggoting and piling the bark was as picturesque as heart could wish.

This day's journey was through fine wild Highland scenery, where rocks and fragments of rocks were tumbled upon each other, as if by giants in a passion, and now and then by giants playing at bowls with huge round bowls. These roads—some of them for which we "lift up our eyes and bless Marshal Wade," and some made by Telford, the vast superiority in the laying out of which William has had the pleasure of pointing out to his sisters—beautifully wind over hill and through valley, by the sides of streams and lakes. We saw the eight locks joining together on the Caledonian Canal, called Neptune's Stairs; and at another place on the canal William, who had been asleep, instinctively wakened just in time to see a dredging machine at work: we stopped the carriage, and walked down to look at it: took a boat and rowed round the vessel, and went on board and saw the machinery. A steam-engine works an endless chain of buckets round and round upon a platform with rollers. The buckets have steel mouthpieces, some with quite sharp projecting lips, which cut into the sand and gravelly bottom, and scoop up what fills each bucket. At the bottom of each are cullender holes, through which the water drains off as the buckets go on and pass over the platform and empty themselves on an inclined plane, down which the contents fall into a boat, which rows away when full, and deposits the contents wherever wanted. If you ever looked at a book at Edgeworthstown called Machines Approuvés, you would have the image of this machine. It brought my father's drawings of the Rhone machine before my eyes.

The whole day's drive was delightful—mountains behind mountains as far as the eye could reach, in every shade, from darkest to palest Indian-ink cloud colour; an ocean of mountains, with perpetually changing foreground of rocks, sometimes bare as ever they were born, sometimes wooded better than ever the hand of mortal taste clothed a mountain in reality or in picture, with oak, aspen, and the beautiful pendant birch.

At Fort Augustus the house was painting, and the beds looked wretched; but all was made plausible with the help of fires and fair words, and we slept as well, or better, than kings and queens. As to any real inconvenience at Highland inns, we have met with none; always good fish, good eggs, good butter, and good humour.

Next day we had another delightful drive: saw the Fall of Foyers: fine scrambling up and down to a rock, and on this rock such huge tumbledown stones, like Druids' temples, half-fallen, half-suspended. The breath was almost taken away and head dizzy looking at them above and the depth below; one could hardly believe we stood safe. Yet here we are safe and sound at Inverness, the Capital of the North, as Scott calls it. This Bennet's Hotel, where we are lodged, is as good as any in London or Edinburgh, and cleaner than almost any I ever was in, with a waiter the perfection of intelligence. We are going to see a place called the Dream, the name translated from the Gaelic.

I forgot to tell you that, when at Edinburgh, we went to see Sir James and Lady Foulis's friends, the Jardines, who were also friends of Henry's. They are in a very pretty house, Laverock Bank, a few miles from Edinburgh. We "felicity hunters" have found more felicity than such hunters usually meet with.

Footnotes

1. Margaret, daughter of Dr. James Gregory, married to William Pulteney Alison, Professor of Medicine in the University of Edinburgh.
2. Miss Edgeworth describes Sir Walter Scott in her Helen: "If you have seen Raeburn's admirable pictures, or Chantrey's speaking bust, you have as complete an idea of Sir Walter Scott as painting or sculpture can give. The first impression of his appearance and manner was surprising to me, I recollect, from its quiet, unpretending good-nature; but scarcely had that impression been made, before I was struck with something of the chivalrous courtesy of other times. In his conversation you would have found all that is most delightful in all his works—the combined talents and knowledge of the historian, novelist, antiquary, and poet. He recited poetry admirably, his whole face and figure kindling as he spoke; but whether talking, reading, or reciting, he never tired me, even with admiring. And it is curious that, in conversing with him, I frequently found myself forgetting that I was speaking with Sir Walter Scott; and, what is even more extraordinary, forgetting that Sir Walter Scott was speaking to me, till I was awakened to the conviction by his saying something which no one else could have said. Altogether, he was certainly the most perfectly agreeable and perfectly amiable great man I ever knew."
3. William, one of Miss Edgeworth's half-brothers, had joined his sisters at Edinburgh.