Sir Walter Scott in his eagerness to purchase land for his Abbotsford estate, and to fill the mansion with antiquarian and historical curios, brought together with persevering industry and at great cost, was continually in need of money to carry out his plans. Abbotsford eventually became a show-place, and at the same time a kind of hotel, where the greatest men of Europe were proud to be received and to partake of his hospitality. In 1820 Scott received the baronetcy for which he longed, as an aristocratic badge for the new Border family he had the desire to found; and soon after he figured as director of the pageantry in welcoming George IV. to Scotland. The sums which he spent in these ways were great; nor could he have reconciled himself to such outlays, except from the conviction that his genius was a mine upon which he could draw whenever he pleased. For much of this expenditure he resorted to Constable, who, acting as a sort of literary broker, took the author’s genius and popularity in pledge for advances to him. It would have been better for all concerned had Constable, as well as the Ballantynes, been less accommodating on these occasions, for it was, no doubt, the command of ready money that induced Scott to launch out into extravagant schemes. His purchases of land were the talk of the whole district around Melrose and Selkirk, and it was a common saying among the rustics, “that they would wish for no ampler fortune than just the length and breadth of themselves in land within half a mile of the Shirra’s house.” Some in the neighbourhood shook their heads doubtfully over it all, and one adjacent proprietor, whose property Scott envied, told him that “he wouldna be surprised if he lived to see the craws bigging in the braw lum-heads.” But author, printer, and publisher seemed alike intoxicated with the success of the Waverley Novels, and the nature of their dealings was perhaps without parallel in literary commerce. Not to speak of the extravagant remuneration for books already before the public, and of advances for books in progress, it afterwards appeared that large sums were drawn for works which, if contemplated, were at least not begun. To add to all these difficulties, Scott was led by a feeling of gratitude to grant Constable counter-acceptances, in order to relieve him from those embarrassments of which he himself was the chief cause. The complications of all these transactions, precipitated by a commercial panic, brought on at last a complete crash. At the end of January 1826, the firm of Archibald Constable & Co. was declared bankrupt; shortly after, the failure of James Ballantyne & Co. was announced; and with these houses that of Hurst, Robinson & Co., of London, was hopelessly involved. The market was stocked with the dishonoured bills of the firms, and confidence in the great publishing houses was ended. Scott himself was involved in something like £130,000, between publishers and printers.