278 Statements concerning Sir Walter Scott. 



One of the advantages of the present garden of Ashiesteel, 

 its being raised above the river-damp, was shown by the 

 scarlet Tropmolum speciosum — whose decorative effects Lady 

 Scott would have highly appreciated — having been entirely 

 killed at the house, some fifty feet above the river, though 

 not at the garden, fifty feet higher up, by the frost of 1895. 



It is hard to say — except that he is included in the 

 atmosphere of myth which surrounds everything connected 

 with Sir Walter Scott — why the statement should have been 

 lately made that Lockhart was latterly not on good terms 

 with his daughter, Mrs Hope Scott. He died in her house, 

 a bed having been put up for him on the ground floor, not 

 in the dining-room where Sir Walter died, but in a small 

 room beyond it ; on which occasion the carpenter remarked 

 that Abbotsford was "a vary discomfortable hoose for ony 

 person in trouble" (of course before the addition.) 



And what is perhaps more to the purpose, I believe he 

 had been staying at Abbotsford in the previous year, that 

 between his daughter's change of religion and his own 

 death. 



Mr Hope Scott speaks of the depth and tenderness of 

 feeling which his father-in-law had under an almost fierce 

 reserve. And he himself said to one of his brothers, all 

 men of very social tendencies — whether or not on the 

 occasion of some particular family affliction, I do not know — 

 that he and others like him could not possibly understand 

 what men like himself suffered. 



To return to Sir Walter Scott ; the mythical quality is 

 quite a personal one, and by no means common to all 

 celebrities. There is an interesting article on the subject 

 in the "Athenaeum," about June 1896, reviewing a book on 

 the myths and romances of Alexander the Great, which not 

 only spread over most of the old world, but must apparently 

 have begun in his own lifetime. 



The writer remarks that if the career of Napoleon was not 

 so thoroughly known, it would probably have lent itself to 

 the same kind of embellishment as having somewhat like 

 Alexander's. But I do not see any traces of this, though 

 some of the many books about him are known not to be 

 accurate. 



There is nothing of the kind about the Duke of Wellington 



