Abbotsford: Sir Walter Scott's Romance in Stone

Each major claim carries one of three labels. established means supported by primary records, official bodies or several independent reliable sources. shared means the core fact is sound but sources disagree on details, dates or interpretation. traditional means widely repeated but not traceable to a primary or independent source.

The history of the house is well documented in Scott's letters and the Abbotsford Trust's records. The authenticity of some items in Scott's collection has been questioned.

The accounts of American visitors come from their own letters, journals and published travel books, gathered by Andrew Hook in Scotland and America: A Study of Cultural Relations, 1750–1835 (1975). They are first-hand, but written by admirers for admiring readers, so they tell us more about Scott's welcome and his talk than about the house itself.

Building a dream

established In 1811, already famous for his poetry, Scott bought a small farm on the Tweed. He renamed it Abbotsford, imagining a ford once used by the monks of nearby Melrose Abbey. Over the next fourteen years, funded by his writing, he transformed it into a mansion with towers, turrets and crow-stepped gables, inspired by Scottish castles and abbeys. Fragments of real buildings were incorporated, including a door from Edinburgh's Old Tolbooth.

The collection

established Scott filled the house with objects that evoked Scotland's history: armour, weapons, Rob Roy's gun and sporran, a lock of Bonnie Prince Charlie's hair, and many more. His library held around 9,000 books. The house was a museum of his imagination.

Modern comforts

established Abbotsford was technically advanced for its time. It had gas lighting from 1823, produced in a gasworks on the estate, and an early system of air bells.

Ruin and death

established In 1826 Scott was ruined by the collapse of his publishers and printers, in which he was a partner. He refused to declare bankruptcy and worked tirelessly to repay his creditors, damaging his health. He died at Abbotsford on 21 September 1832.

Washington Irving's visit, 1817

A letter from Campbell. established The American writer Washington Irving, whose father came from Orkney, reached Scotland in August 1817. His way had been prepared by his friend Henry Brevoort, who had dined with Scott in Edinburgh in 1813 and given him Irving's comic History of New York, which Scott admired. Irving found that Scott was at Abbotsford. On 30 August he left Edinburgh, spent a night at Selkirk and hired a chaise. He sent in a letter of introduction from the poet Thomas Campbell, and, as his own notes put it, "in a few minutes Scott himself appeared limping up the hill" (as quoted by Andrew Hook).

Days on the Tweed. established Scott insisted that Irving stay. They walked the hills, visited the haunts of Thomas the Rhymer and called on the old Earl of Buchan, an admirer of America. Irving wrote to his brother that he had been "in a kind of dream or delirium", and when he left on the morning of Wednesday 3 September he said the days had been "worth as many years of ordinary existence" (both as quoted by Hook). He later wrote the visit up as "Abbotsford", one of the sketches in The Crayon Miscellany. Hook judges that for Irving the meeting with Scott was the climax of a tour in which every hill and river spoke of poetry.

George Ticknor's visit, 1819

established George Ticknor of Boston, later a professor at Harvard and historian of Spanish literature, had already got to know Scott in Edinburgh that winter. On 15 March 1819 he and his friend Joseph Cogswell drove to Kelso, and the next day went on to Abbotsford. Ticknor found Scott even livelier at home, with a tradition or a ballad for every big stone on the estate. A piper played a pibroch outside the windows at dinner, and afterwards the company danced Scotch reels. After two days Scott fell suddenly ill, and the Americans left a day earlier than planned, heading south to visit Southey and Wordsworth.

Pilgrims after Scott's death

established Once Scott was dead, Americans came to the house itself. The Unitarian minister Orville Dewey visited in 1833 and described sitting in the chair at Scott's desk, so moved that he could not speak until he had ridden miles away. N. P. Willis, whose "Pencillings by the Way" were reprinted across hundreds of American newspapers, came in the autumn of 1834, at the end of a Highland tour, and wrote that Scott's trees, planted "by the same hand that waved its wand of enchantment over the world", seemed to have thoughts and memories (as quoted by Hook). For readers at home, such pieces made Abbotsford a fixed point on the American map of Scotland.

On the tourist route. established Hook reconstructs the usual American tour of the 1820s and 1830s. Visitors based themselves in Edinburgh, sailed up the Forth to Stirling and went through the Trossachs to Loch Lomond and Glasgow. Abbotsford was occasionally reached by extending a return journey through the Clyde valley, but more commonly it was a special expedition from Edinburgh.

Visitors

established Abbotsford opened to visitors in 1833 and has attracted them ever since, including Queen Victoria in 1867. In 2007 the Abbotsford Trust took over the house from Scott's descendants, and after a major restoration it reopened in 2013 with a new visitor centre.

• Abbotsford was originally a farm called Cartleyhole.
• It had gas lighting from 1823.
• Scott owned Rob Roy's gun.
• A door from Edinburgh's Old Tolbooth is built into the house.
• Abbotsford has been open to visitors since 1833.
• Washington Irving arrived with a letter from the poet Thomas Campbell; Scott came "limping up the hill" to greet him.
• At dinner with the Boston scholar George Ticknor in 1819, a piper played outside the windows, and the evening ended with Scotch reels.
• In 1833 the American minister Orville Dewey sat in Scott's chair in the study and said his only homage was silence.

• Do not vouch for the authenticity of every relic in Scott's collection.
• Do not describe the pre-1832 American visits as tourism. Irving, Ticknor and the rest came as Scott's guests with letters of introduction; the house opened to the public only after his death.
• Do not take the visitors' accounts as neutral. They were written by admirers, often for publication, and dwell on Scott's charm rather than on the house or the estate.