AMERICAN TOURISTS AT ABBOTSFORD

New Zealand Tablet, 4 September 1913, Page 61

AMERICAN TOURISTS AT ABBOTSFORD

Abbotsford, the home of Sir Walter Scott, was a kind of ever-open door to an unparalleled “.variety of guests,-and besides those who were welcome, there was a great army of uninvited.- 'Such visitors, -writes W. S. Crockett in * Abbotsford,' ; were a constant -source of annoyance to Scott.. It was impossible at times, it was said, to pass between Melrose and Abbotsford without encountering people armed with sketch books, < evidently bent on a peep at the famous writer. - : ■ Some came furnished with letters of introduction from friends, for whose sake Scott received them cordially. Others had no introduction at all, but,.pencil and notebook in hand, took the most impertinent liberties with the place and its occupants. ; ~ V Lockhart recalls how, on returning to Abbotsford upon one occasion, Scott and he found Mrs. Scott and her daughters doing penance under the * merciless curiosity of two tourists, who had been with her for some hours. They were tall, lanky young men, both of them rigged out in new jackets and trousers of the Macgregor tartan, the one a lawyer, the other a Unitarian preacher from New England. These gentlemen, when told on their arrival that Scott was not at home, had shown such signs of impatience that the servants took it for granted they must have serious business, and asked if they would wish to speak a word with his lady. They grasped at this, and so conducted themselves in the interview that Mrs. Scott never doubted they had brought letters of introduction to her husband, and invited them accordingly to partake of her luncheon. They had been walking about the house and grounds with her and her daughters ever since that time, and appeared at the porch when Scott and his party returned to dinner as if they had already been enrolled on his visiting list. For a moment he, too, was taken in. He fancied that his wife must have received and opened their credentials, and shook hands with them with courteous hospitality. But Mrs, Scott, with all her overflowing good nature, was a sharp observer, and she soon interrupted the ecstatic compliments of the strangers .by reminding them that her husband would be glad to have the letters of the friends who had been So good as to send their greetings by them. It then turned out that there were no letters to be produced, and Scott, signifying that his hour for dinner approached, added that he could not trespass further upon their time. The two lion-hunters seemed quite unprepared for this abrupt escape. But there was about Scott, in perfection, when he choose to exert it, the power of civil repulsion, and he bowed the overwhelmed tourists to the door..