Sir Walter Scott and Albany Street
‘He [Scott] was in high spirits, keeping his companions and himself in roars of laughter, and every now and then seizing them, and stopping, that they might take their fill of the fun; there they stood shaking with laughter, " not an inch of their body free" from its grip. At George Street they parted, one [William Clerk] to Rose Court, behind St. Andrew's Church, one to Albany Street [William Erskine], the other, our big and limping friend [Walter Scott], to Castle Street… The third we all know. What has he not done for every one of us? Who else ever, except Shakespeare, so diverted mankind, entertained and entertains a world so liberally, so wholesomely? We are fain to say, not even Shakespeare, for his is something deeper than diversion.’ - Pet Marjorie. A Story Of Child Life Fifty Years Ago by John Brown (Number 51) Although Albany Street cannot claim Sir Walter Scott as a resident, the great writer certainly visited the street on many occasions. Scott’s Edinburgh residence, until he was forced to sell it in 1826, was the house he had built at 39 North Castle Street. In the summer the Scott family lived outwith the city: from 1798 to 1804, in a cottage on the outskirts of Lasswade; when appointed Sheriff Depute of Selkirkshire, at Ashestiel, near Selkirk; and from 1811, between Kelso and Melrose, where he built his grand house, Abbotsford. (Portrait c1830s by John Watson Gordon)Scott’s first friend to live in Albany Street was William Erskine, later Lord Kinneder (Number 11). Scott described Erskine as ‘the nearest and most confidential of all my Edinburgh associates.’ Erskine had an enthusiasm for Scottish writing and wrote poems and several Scottish songs. Walter Scott recruited James Hogg, known as the ‘Ettrick Shepherd’, to collect ballads. The poet attended one of Erskine’s dinners in Albany Street (and Scott also may have been present) and another guest recounted: ‘Erskine, as usual with him before dinner, had sat staring in profound silence. As we went down the stairs he whispered to me - “Hogg is the strangest of mortals. He has broached a good metaphysical doctrine within even being able to tell what the word means.”’
When Erskine's wife, Euphemia, died in 1819, Scott wrote this Epitaph for her gravestone:
Plain as her native dignity of mind,
Arise the tomb of her we have resigned;
Unflawed and stainless be the marble scroll,
Emblem of lovely form and candid soul.—
But, O, what symbol may avail to tell
The kindness, wit, and sense we loved so well!
What sculpture show the broken ties of life,
Here buried with the parent, friend, and wife!
Or on the tablet stamp each title dear
By which thine urn, Euphemia , claims the tear!
Yet taught by thy meek sufferance to assume
Patience in anguish, hope beyond the tomb,
Resigned, though sad, this votive verse shall flow,
And brief, alas! as thy brief span below.
Erskine became seriously ill and, although his final weeks coincided with Scott’s hectic organising of the royal pageantry for the visit of King George the Fourth, Scott visited his friend at his Albany Street house every day. By unfortunate chance, Erskine’s funeral had to take place the very day the King arrived in Edinburgh. In spite of Scott’s key role in the royal occasion, he slipped away from the festivities to see his friend buried.
Until their relationship cooled towards the end of Scott’s life, James Ballantyne (Numbers 18 and 26) was a key figure in Scott’s literay success: as editor, business partner and printer. One of the Ballantyne daughters, Christiana (then the 83 year-old Mrs Blathwayt) recalled Scott visiting their Albany Street house when she was a child: ‘I remember Sir Walter Scott dined with us, and Tom Moore, the Irish poet, singing his own songs at the piano. It was on that occasion I remember, that Sir Walter Scott kissed me.’
The Kerrs (Number 36) and the Ferriers (Number 38) were close friends of the Scott family. Two of the Kerrs daughters, probably the younger Lucy and Mary, were regular visitors to stay with Sir Walter Scott in Abbotsford. In his journals from his last years, Scott writes: ‘Misses Kerr came to tea, and we had fun and singing in the evening.’ ‘Also the two Miss Kerrs, Lord Robert's daughters, and so behold us a gallant Christmas party (1827), full of mirth and harmony. Moreover, Captain John Ferguson came over from Huntly Burn, so we spent the day jocundly. I intend to take a holiday or two while these friends are about us. I have worked hard enough to merit it.’ ‘The Misses Kerr left us on Friday--two charming young persons, well-looked, well-mannered, and well-born; above all, well-principled. They sing together in a very delightful manner, and our evenings are the duller without them.’
As it had been James Ferrier who had appointed Scott one of the principal clerks of the Court of Session, and they worked together as clerks, the two remained friends. (sketch of Scott at work in the Court of Session by Robert Scott Moncrieff) Susan Ferrier first visited Scott with her father in the autumn of 1811, following an invitation from Scott: ‘My Dear Sir - We are delighted to see that your feet are free and disposed to turn themselves our way - a pleasure which we cannot consent to put off till we have a house at Abbotsford, which is but a distant prospect. We are quite disengaged and alone, saving the company of Mr. Terry the comedian, who is assisting me in planning my cottage, having been bred an architect under Wyatt. He reads to us after coffee in the evening, which is very pleasant… Mrs. Scott joins in kind respects to Miss Ferrier, and I ever am, dear Sir,—yours truly obliged, W. Scott.’ Susan later described that visit. ‘Nothing could be kinder than our welcome, or more gratifying than the attentions we received during our stay; but the weather was too broken and stormy to admit of our enjoying any of the pleasant excursions our more weather-proof host had intended for us. My father and I could therefore only take short drives with Mrs. Scott, while the bard (about one o'clock:) mounted his pony, and accompanied by Mr. Terry the comedian, his own son Walter, and our young relative George Kinloch, sallied forth for a long morning's ride in spite of wind and rain. In the evening Mr. Terry commonly read some scenes from a play, to which Mr. Scott listened with delight, though every word must have been quite familiar to him, as he occasionally took a part in the dialogue impromptu; at other times he recited old and awesome ballads from memory, the very names of which I have forgot.’
She dedicated her novel, Destiny, to Scott and in his journal he described Susan as: ‘A gifted personage, having, besides her great talents, conversation the least exigeante of any author-female, at least, whom I have ever seen among the long list I have encountered; simple, full of humour, and exceedingly ready at repartee, and all this without the least affectation of the blue-stocking.’
Her last visit to Abbotsford is described by Lockhart in his Life of Scott: ‘To assist them in amusing him in the hours which he spent out of his study, and especially that he might make these hours more frequent, his daughter had invited his friend the authoress of Marriage to come out to Abbotsford, and her coming was serviceable. For she knew and loved him well, and she had seen enough of affliction akin to his to be well skilled in dealing with it. She could not be an hour in his company without observing what filled his children with more sorrow than all the rest of the case. He would begin a story as gaily as ever, and go on, in spite of the hesitation in his speech, to tell it with highly picturesque effect—but before he reached the point, it would seem as if some internal spring had given way. He paused and gazed round him with the blank anxiety of look that a blind man has when he has dropped his staff. Unthinking friends sometimes gave him the catch-word abruptly. I noticed the delicacy of Miss Ferrier on such occasions. Her sight was bad, and she took care not to use her glasses when he was speaking, and she affected also to be troubled with deafness, and would say, “Well, I am getting as dull as a post, I have not heard a word since you said so and so,” being sure to mention a circumstance behind that at which he had really halted. He then took up the thread with his habitual smile of courtesy, as if forgetting his case entirely in the consideration of the lady's infirmity.’
The third of Scott’s closest friends, Adam Ferguson, came to live in Albany Street (Number 29) twenty years after Scott’s death. In 1816, when Ferguson left the army,, Scott offered to house him and his two sisters in the mansion-house of Totfield, which Scott had recently purchased as part of the Abbotsford estate. It was renamed Huntly Burn at Fergusons’ sisters request. The Fergusons were wholly assimilated into Scott’s life at Abbotsford: ‘The dining-room was still a tiny place and John of Skye (Scott’s piper) had to pipe on the green outside. Scott was generally in high spirits at dinner, though he ate little; he had no fixed seat at table, but would drop into any place vacant. The company did not sit long when the cloth was drawn, but joined the ladies in the library or the drawing-room, where about ten o’clock a light supper was served. Sometimes they danced reels, and on most evenings there was music, when Adam Ferguson would sing Johnnie Cope.’
While Ferguson and his sisters were living there, Sir David Wilkie visited and painted this portrayal of Scott seated as though about to relate a story to a gathering of family and friends. (The Abbotsford family by Sir David Wilkie - National galleries of Scotland) Wilkie exercises artistic licence, depicting Scott's daughters as bare footed country milkmaids and Ferguson as a gamekeeper or poacher. Also included is Scott's highland dog, a present from the Laird of Glengary. Wilkie commented on the 'good humour and merriment' of everyone in the party.