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Updated: June 24, 2025


Sir Walter Scott died at Abbotsford on September 21, 1832, and was buried four days later at Dryburgh, a post-mortem examination having disclosed considerable softening of the brain.

J.R. Hope, from the Protestant Episcopal Church of England and their union with the Roman Catholic Church. Mr. Hope, who became Hope-Scott on succeeding to the estate of Abbotsford, was the gentleman who helped Mr. Gladstone in getting through the press his book on Church and State, revising, correcting and reading proof.

There is no use in making a catalogue of these curiosities. The feeling in visiting Abbotsford is not that of awe; it is little more than going to a museum. I do abhor this mode of making pilgrimages to the shrines of departed great men. It is an odd truth, too, that a house is forever after spoiled and ruined as a home, by having been the abode of a great man.

In December, Scott borrowed £10,000 on the lands of Abbotsford, and advanced that sum to the struggling houses; on January 16, 1826, their ruin, and Scott's with them, were complete. Scott immediately placed his whole affairs in the hands of three trustees, and by the 26th all his creditors had agreed to a private trust to which he mortgaged all his future literary labours.

The house at Abbotsford was at first a mere cottage, on the banks of the Tweed; my brother-in-law, Samuel, had a villa adjacent to it, and John, Lord Somerville, had a house and property on the opposite bank of the river, to which he came every spring for salmon fishing.

How Scott found time for so much work is a mystery, writing nearly three novels a year, besides other literary labors, attending to his duties in the Courts, overlooking the building of Abbotsford and the cultivation of his twelve hundred acres, and entertaining more guests than Voltaire did at Ferney.

It rained heavily, however, which prevented my making this excursion, and indeed I rather overwalked myself yesterday, and have occasion for rest. "So sit down, Robin, and rest thee." Abbotsford, August 27. To-day we journeyed through the hills and amongst the storms; the weather rather bullying than bad.

I had my two youths again to breakfast, but I did not say more about my determination, save that I would help them if I could make it convenient. The Chief Commissioner has agreed to let Heath have his pretty picture of a Study at Abbotsford, by Edwin Landseer, in which old Maida occurs. The youth Reynolds is what one would suppose his father's son to be, smart and forward, and knows the world.

These hills, which, I suppose, are some of them on the Abbotsford estate, are partly covered with woods, but of Scotch fir, or some tree of that species, which creates no softened undulation, but overspreads the hill like a tightly fitting wig.

The house of Abbotsford was not completed, and finally rid of carpenters and upholsterers, until Christmas, 1824; but the first time I saw it was in 1818, and from that time onwards Scott's hospitality was extended freely not only to the proprietors and tenants of the surrounding district, but to a never-ending succession of visitors who came to Abbotsford as pilgrims.

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