FURTHER NOTES CONCERNING SIR WALTER SCOTT 211 



There is a story of Mrs Erskine, not recorded by Lord Buchan, 

 to the effect that after they had moved from George Square to 

 Princes St., she on one occasion sent a message to their next 

 door neighbours, the Tytlers, to say that she was sure that they 

 the Tytlers, must keep their back door open, there was such a 

 draught in their, the Erskines' house ! 



One might imagine she had a confused reminiscence of the 

 inconvenience of a communication with a neighbour's house at the 

 back and the impossibility of keeping out his children, even if 

 geniuses, when there was a mutual territory like the stables 

 which Mr Erskine rented. 



There are one or two errors about the portraits mentioned in 

 the paper of 1896. The date of the one painted for Lady 

 Abercorn is 1820, and the little black dog is Ourisk ; it is quite 

 unlike what is called a Skye terrier, though Sir Walter says it 

 was of the silky-haired Kintail breed. — The artist, Watson 

 Gordon. What indirectly led to the mistake was the youthful- 

 ness of the face, fair and rather fleshy. He must have been at 

 least forty-eight, but looks ten years less. Making all allowances 

 for the artist's style, this goes to show that it was his own reck- 

 less overwork which made such a wreck of him little more than ten 

 years later. He had had more than one severe illness by this time. 



It is as well to mention, that the portrait of a boy, said to be 

 that of Walter Scott by Raehurn, put up for sale at Christie 

 and Manson's in 1897, was not really sold, but bought in, not 

 having reached the reserve price. Circumstances are rather in 

 favour of its genuineness, and the absence of likeness to any of 

 the well-known portraits is by no means against it, especially 

 considering the transition stage it represents. It is the portrait 

 of a boy about twelve years old, even then on a large scale, but 

 unmistakeably quite young. Raeburn went to study in Rome 

 in 1785, when Sir Walter was fourteen, and it must have been 

 painted rather before that time ; and he, Raeburn,who had origin- 

 ally been a miniature-painter, was a protege of Clerk of Eldin, 

 who was one of the most intimate of Sir Walter's older friends. 



The dress is a jacket of very red tartan, with a small close cap, 

 with a feather like cock's hackles lying flat on it. And boys do 

 seem to have been put into tartan in the last century, whether 

 as a protest against the Parliamentary Union with England.as was 

 supposed to be the case with the women's head-shawls, or not. 

 One of Hamilton of Bangour's shorter poems is an epigram on the 



