Abbotsford (Scotland); Scott, Walter, 1771-1832 -- Homes and haunts
LIEUTENANT-COLONEL SIR WALTER SCOTT
OF ABBOTSFORD, SECOND BARONET,
DIED AT SEA, 8 FEBRUARY, 1847, AGED 45 YEARS.
HIS WIDOW PLACED THIS STONE OVER HIS GRAVE.
* * * * *
DAME JANE JOBSON,
HIS WIDOW,
DIED AT LONDON, 19 MARCH, 1877, AGED 76 YEARS.
These tombs and inscriptions follow each other from the back to the
front of the aisle. And on the right of the others is Lockhart's,
at right angles, with a bronze medallion at the top:
HERE,
AT THE FEET OF SIR WALTER SCOTT,
LIE
THE MORTAL REMAINS OF
JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART,
HIS SON-IN-LAW,
BIOGRAPHER AND FRIEND.
BORN 14 JUNE, 1794.
DIED 25 NOV., 1854.
If we be wise, we shall make the return journey by Dryburgh village
and Newtown. What a magnificent river the Tweed is here, looking
either up or down from the Baillie Suspension Bridge, or the high
red bank beyond! Surely the Eildons never backgrounded a pleasanter
picture than this. All the landscape is, in sooth, among the
fairest of fair scenes, on which we shall want to feast the eye
again and again, to be dreaming of Dryburgh when, it may be, over
the seas and far away. On a summer's day, or at the early autumn,
or even 'mid winter's mantling white, it seems to carry a perpetual
charm.
Kelso, as a shrine of Scott, may not be left unvisited. Here he
was schooled (partly), but better, it was at Kelso that the whole
world of Romance opened out to his delighted fancy. Robert Burns
is said to have gazed in wondrous and even prayerful rapture
on the vision of Kelso Bridge and the Tweed, forming an almost
perfect picture. And this, with the Abbey, 'like some antique Titan
predominating over the dwarfs of a later world'; ruined Roxburgh,
between Tweed's and Teviot's flow; and the near neighbourhood of
other memory-moving spots, were just the scenes which made the
best appeal to Scott, which influenced him most, and the fruits
of whose inspiration we still daily reap. Jedburgh has some claim
on the Scott student and for the lover of old romance. His best
hours will be spent by its venerable Abbey, in the most excellent
of situations (how well those old monks could gauge the lie of the
land!), girt about with well-kept gardens, overlooking the bosky
banks of the Jed--a veritable poem in Nature and Art.
[Illustration: KELSO ABBEY AND BRIDGE]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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