Walter Scott: His Life and Personality by Hesketh Pearson

Author:Hesketh Pearson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: House of Stratus

CHAPTER XIV

AT CONUNDRUM CASTLE

‘Whenever a Scotsman gets his head above water, he immediately turns it to land,’ remarked Scott, though in his case it would be more apposite to say that land went to his head. From the moment he settled at Abbotsford his eyes, so to speak, were set on the horizon, and his mouth watered for more land. By the end of 1815 he had purchased a large lump of bog and heather for £3,400, which more than doubled his property, and was bargaining for a hundred acres bordering Cauldshields Loch, one of the many Scottish lakes inhabited by a monster, in this case something like a hippopotamus, the appearance of which in broad daylight had been attested by sundry people, including ‘a very cool-headed sensible man’. The presence, and absence, of such creatures were a feature of Scottish folklore for many generations, the Loch Ness monster having been visible, or invisible, in our own. Scott never caught sight of his amphibian.

At the close of ’16 his estate had grown from a hundred to nearly a thousand acres, the smallholders in his neighbourhood, seeing the glint of greed in his eyes, having sold him their property at exorbitant prices. More acres were added late in ’17 by the purchase of the mansion and grounds of Toftfield, for which he gave £10,000, at the same time advising John Ballantyne to be prudent in his personal spendings. He renamed the house Huntly Burn, and established his friend Adam Fergusson there with his sisters in 1818, having already appointed William Laidlaw as his factor and settled his family at Kaeside, another house on the growing Abbotsford estate. Fergusson was an old school-friend, at whose father’s house Scott had met Burns. Adam had been trained for the law; but the steady grind proved too much for him and he got a commission in the army. The friends then lost touch with one another for several years, until Scott received a long letter from Fergusson describing the enthusiasm aroused by his nightly readings from The Lady of the Lake to the troops at Torres Vedras during the Peninsular War. After the campaign Captain Fergusson longed for ‘a snug little farm on Tweedside’, and Huntly Burn satisfied his desire. He and Scott were on terms of facetious familiarity, constantly laughing at one another, always good-naturedly, and enjoying every minute they spent together. As an entertaining companion none of Walter’s friends compared with Adam, who could tell stories and sing songs and ‘set the table on a roar’ with his flashes of merriment.

Besides ensuring the constant society of Fergusson, the acquisition of Huntly Burn pleased Scott because it made him ‘a great laird’. Yet it did not satisfy his appetite for earth. ‘I would not engage so deep but there is always some tempting piece of land runs away with me,’ he told James Ballantyne in August 1820, and three years later he confessed that ‘Abbotsford has cost me a mint of money without much return as yet.

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