The National tribune., 1881-08-27
SIR WALTER SCOTT AND HIS MOTHER.

name of Rutherford for her married name of
Scott. having the happiness to unite her lot with
one who not only scrupulously honorable
man but from his youth up had led a singularly
hlameess life. OF her father it is told that when
in practice as physician he never gave pre-
scrption without silently invoking OH it the
blessing of heaven and the piety which dictated
the custom had been inherited by his daughter
Her education also had been excellent one,
giving besides good general grounding an ac-
quaintance with literature and not neglecting
the more homely duties of the needle and the
accOunt-bOOk" Her manners, mOreOver-an i'm
pOrtant and too often neglected factor in a
mothers influence over her chdrcn-were fin
ished and elegant, though intOlcrably stiff in
some respects when compared with the manners
and habits Of to-day. The maidens of ISL can
hardly realize for instance, the asperity of the
training of their embryo great -grandmothers who
were always made to sit in Spartanly upright
posture that Mrs Scott in her seventy-ninth
year boasted that she had never allowed her
shoulders to touch the back Of her chair.
As young Walter of many children,
he could not of course monopolize his mothers
attention; but probably she recognized the
promise of his future greatness-unlike the
mother of the Duke of Wellington, who thought
Arthur the family dunce-and gave him special
care for, speaking of his early bOyhood, he tells
us: 4 found much consolation in the partiality
of my mother" Like the mothers of the Ettrick
Shepherd and of Burns, she repeated to her son
the traditiOnary ballads she knew by heart and
so soon as he was sufficiently advanced his leisure
hours were usually spent in reading POpes trans
latiOns of Homer aloud to her, which, with the
I'LL, Il, -
Ramsay's songs, was the first poetry he made
acquaintance with. When he read to her she
was wont, he says, to make him pause upon
those passages which expressed generous and
worthy sentiments "a most happy method of
education and most effective one in the case of
an impressiOnable boy. A little later, when he
passed from the educational care of his mother
to that of a tutor, his relations to literature
changed, as the following passage from his auto
biography will show: My tutor thought it almost
a sin to open prOfane play poem, and my
mother had no longer the opportunity to hear
me read poetry formerly. | found, however,
in her dressng-rO where | slept at one time
some odd volumes of Shakespeare nor can easily
forget the rapture with which | sat up in my
shirt reading them by the light of fire in her
apartment until the hustle of the family rising
from supper warned me that it time for me
to creep back to my bed where | was supposed
to have been safely deposited since o'clock"
1t was in relation to Mrs. Scott's control of her
sons reading that he wrote with gratitude late
in life, My mother had good natural taste and
great feeling" And after her death, in letter
to a friend, he paid her this tribute she had a
mind perfectly well stored. If | have been able
to do anything in the way of painting the past
times it is very much for the studies with which
she presented me-" Her charity as well as her
love for genealOgy and her appetite for story
telling was transmitted to her son. 1t found ex-
preston in him not only in material gifts to the
poor but in a conscious care and consideration for
the feelings of others.
That she smiled on his early evidences of talent
and tostered them, we may we'll imagine and
the tenderness with which she regarded his early
compositions is indicated by the fact that copy
of verses, written in IA bOyish scrawl was care
fully preserved by her. and found, after her death,
folded in paper on which was inscribed, MY
Walters first lines, 1872" That she gloried in
his successes when they came We gather; for
when speaking late in life to Dr. Davy about his
brother Sir Humphreys distinction Sir Walter
doubtless drawing on his own home memories
lCHIdIhtu III l)dNN iudt your mOtnGr
lived to see it; there must have been great
pleasure in that to her. But with whatever zeal
Mrs. Scott may have unolded Sir Walters mind
by her training, by her praise by her mOtherly
enthusiasm, it is certain that from first to last
she loved his soul and sought its interest, in and
above all. Her final present to him before she
died was not Shakespeare or Milton, but an
old Bible-the book she loved best and for her
sake Sir Walter loved it too.
Happy was Mrs. Scott in having a son who in
all things recprocated the affection of his mother
With the first fve-gunea fee he earned at the
bar he bought q present for her-a silver taper
stand which stood on her mantelpiece many
year. When he became enamOred of Miss Car
penter he finally wrote to consult his mother
about the attachment, and to beg her blessing
upon it when in 1919 she died at an advanced
age he in attendance at her side, and, full of
occupations though he was, we find him busying
himself to obtain for her body beautifully
situated grave And when in due course his
executors came to search for his testament and
lifted up his desk I'VE found" says one of
them, arranged in careful order series of little
objects, which had obviously been so placed there
that his eye might rest on them every morning
before he began his tasks" There were the old
fashioned boxes that had garnished his mothers