Statements concerning Sir Walter Scott. 273 



other side of the river; and in one of his letters to C. K. 

 Sharpe, Sir Walter regrets never having had a visit from 

 him at Ashiesteel, which they were leaving the next year. 

 With regard to visitors who were actually there, Sir Walter 

 says that Miss Lydia White's sketches represented the 

 mountains of Selkirkshire as standing on their apexes; and 

 he concludes one of his letters on seeing her carriage 

 approaching Ashiesteel, probably by the Cliff road, as the 

 way to the ford from Clovenfords is called — meaning no 

 doubt ckff. The interesting fact that Mrs Siddons was at 

 Ashiesteel may be mentioned in some of the biographies, 

 but it is best known from Sir Walter's recollection of the 

 dignified solemnity with which she addressed the footboy 

 at dinner. "You've brought me water, boy — I asked for 

 beer ! " 



Richard Heber, the great book collector, was at Ashiesteel. 



Sir Walter mentions, in one of his letters, that " Robert 

 Dundas and his lady" were to be at Ashiesteel. This is 

 explained by the editor to mean the son and daughter-in-law 

 of Lord Melville, long his neighbour near Lasswade. It 

 may or may not have been during this visit that a droll 

 occurrence happened, which was witnessed by the late Mrs 

 Pringle of Yair. When on a visit at Yair, long before her 

 marriage, she had dined with the Scotts at Ashiesteel, with 

 the rest of the Yair party, to meet, she said, the Dundases 

 of Arniston ; but as the Melville Dundases were their first 

 cousins, and she herself very young at the time, it is most 

 likely the guests were the couple designated. 



The peculiarity of the entertainment was that the principal 

 course of the dinner consisted of four legs of mutton. The 

 history of this robust repast was that the supplies, which 

 were to have come from Edinburgh, presumably by the 

 coach, had not arrived ; the Scotts had sent round the 

 country to raise the materials for a dinner, and everybody 

 had sent legs of mutton. Sir Walter seems not to have 

 been prepared for this, and was intensely diverted by it, 

 and made such a complete joke of it that everybody was 

 delighted. Fish and fowl of some sort there would be for 

 the other courses, for when there was no restriction as to 

 netting, trout fresh from the Tweed would almost certainly 

 be available ; in fact in spite of, or perhaps rather in 



J.T 



