Statements concerning Sir Walter Scott. 263 



The "gross and grotesque," of course, must have referred 

 to Caleb and the Eavenswood establishment generally. And 

 all this connects intimately with his own history. It was 

 the want of money, or of any prospect of success at the 

 bar, which put him out of the question as a desirable 

 suitor for Miss Belshes. 



And I do not know that the same romantic presentment 

 of poverty occurs anywhere else. It is the ruinous expense 

 of his father's funeral which has reduced Eavenswood to 

 such immediate straits, while the father has suflered in the 

 political changes of the period. 



But I am inclined to think that the supposition, mentionfd 

 in the Proceedings of the Club some three or four years 

 ago, that the position of the Eavenswood family, as suggested 

 by that of the ruined Edgars of Wedderlie, does account 

 for a good deal about the novel ; although it is a story of 

 a quite ordinary and modern type comparatively. The last 

 laird and lady seem to have got the credit of ruining the 

 family; for when it came to leaving the house for the last 

 time, the son refused to leave the house of his ancestors in 

 dayligrht, and waited till night — after his parents had started 

 in their coach and four, which did not imply any particular 

 extravagance, but merely the state of the roads among 

 the hills. 



His calling his hero Edgar Eavenswood looks as if Sir 

 Walter had this story running in his head ; for, though 

 Edgar is not uncommon as a surname, I have never heard 

 of any case of its being given as a christian name in 

 Scotland ; and his making the locality Lammermoor had the 

 advantage of not pointing to either of the real stories which 

 seem to be in some sort blended in the novel. I believe 

 every house, anywhere near the march of Berwickshire and 

 East Lothian, claims to be Eavenswood Castle, and a few 

 more besides ; but, I imagine, this is the real one, as far 

 as it connects with any real locality. It does not follow 

 that Sir Walter had ever seen the place ; and from what 

 he says, one would infer that he had never travelled the 

 high road between Edinburgh and Berwick. 



He says he had never seen Fastcastle but from the sea ; 

 and though he says (in his notes to the novels) that it may 

 as well be Wolf's Crag as any other place, the description 



