SIR WALTER SCOTT AND JOHN HENRY NEWMAN

Remarks by Patrick Killough
to the 2007 Convention
of the Venerable John Henry Newman Association
Pittsburgh Holiday Inn

Friday August 10   8:30 - 9:20 a. m.

FOOTNOTE # 08

(8) On Newman's two visits to Abbotsford. More on Scott's descendants.

Scott's country estate is being steadily re-evaluated upwards both for powerfully, perhaps ruinously, motivating Scott to earn money through writing and as neo-Gothic architecture much copied throughout Europe, including Tsarist Russia. For the latest scholarship see Iain G. BROWN (ed.), 2003,  ABBOTSFORD AND SIR WALTER SCOTT: THE IMAGE AND THE INFLUENCE.

Abbotsford today is held in a trust while the status of its possible ownership by other Walter Scott heirs is being determined by law. Its size is 1,110 acres. It might once have been somewhat larger, even 1,300 or even 1,400 acres according to 19th century reports. Scott introduced scientific breeding of plants and animals and certain technical advances within the main house, e.g. electric bells for speaking tubes. Whether scholars have yet written comparisons of Abbotsford and Thomas Jefferson's Monticello I do not know. It seems, of course, a worthwhile project.

Father Newman twice, at twenty year intervals, was house guest and celebrated mass in the chapel at Walter Scott's Abbotsford estate, less than fifty miles southeast of Edinburgh. The first time his host and hostess were James and Charlotte Hope. The second and last time the priest was hosted by twice widowed James Hope-Scott.

In 1852 Hope and his first wife, Charlotte, Walter Scott's granddaughter and soon-to-be heiress, were living at Abbotsford as tenants of her brother.

Newman spent a six week holiday in Scotland as one of several Abbotsford house guests. This was after losing in the Achilli libel trial but before final disposition of the case. Exhausted and recovering from a bout of influenza, Newman arrived in Sir Walter's "Conundrum Castle," with its surprisingly cramped, dark corridors and wind-swept bedrooms. These visits are particularly well covered by Meriol Trevor: the 1852-3 one (1962) pp. 615 - 619 and that of 1872 in (1963), p. 506f. See also the Hope-Scott MEMOIRS (Ornsby 2007).

The Hopes had a private chapel. In 1852 - 3 the local bishop allowed Newman to celebrate Mass there and be responsible for local Catholics over Christmas. But Father Newman was so weak that he begged off sick calls [Trevor (1962), p. 618]. The weather was terrible, permitting Newman only two days walking by December 27. The wind whistled through a house bursting with noble guests, including Arundels. All were in chapel frequently.

Students of Abbotsford have made much of Newman's descriptions of  living conditions at Abbotsford:
its passages so narrow that "I could shake hands with the nursery maids in the rooms opposite me, without leaving my own room -- and sometimes of a morning or evening in going down stairs, seeing nothing, I hear a step approaching, and am obliged to stand still where I am, for fear of consequences, and then a little light figure shoots past me on the right or left. ... Once there was an awful moral stoppage, neither daring to move.' " [Ian Ker, 1990, p. 398, citing Dessain, LD 247]

And whom did those nursery maids who shook hands with the good Father take care of? Mary Monica Hope-Scott, born 10/02/1852, only 2 1/2 months before Newman's arrival.

In 1853, on the death of her childless brother, a soldier serving in India, Charlotte Scott Hope inherited Abbotsford. Title passed immediately to her husband, voluntarily renamed for the purpose James Robert Scott-Hope. A flourishing lawyer and major Anglican and Catholic philantropist, Scott-Hope advised Newman during the Achilli libel trial and later mediated between Newman, the Irish bishops and certain parties in Rome.

In July 1872 Newman paid a second visit to Abbotsford. Newman was annoyed by the surge of tourist visits to Abbotsford since 1852-53. NOTE: Abbotsford had been opened to tourists five months after the Laird's death -- to raise money to pay his remaining debts.] Tourists were poking their heads in the windows before 6:00 a.m. [Ker,1990, p. 672, citing LD 140]. Newman's  twice widowed friend James Hope-Scott was in very poor health and the two friends were never to meet again. Newman was likely the last house guest Hope-Scott personally received at Abbotsford.

Hope-Scott then went into decline and died in London April 29, 1873. A shaken Newman preached and was near tears over Hope-Scott's coffin May 5, 1873 at a requiem Mass in London. For the lengthy text see Ornsby (2007), Appendix I.

For the flavor of the cordial relations between Hope and Newman see:

_J. R. Hope, Esq., Q.C. to the Very Rev. Dr. Newman._
5 Calverly Terrace, Tunbridge Wells: October 23, '52.
 
Dear Newman,--I am much grieved by the account of your health which you send. Do, I entreat you, take rest at once--and by rest I
understand, and I suspect from Dr. Murray (?), total removal from work and change of scene. We hope to go to Abbotsford early next month. We have a chapel in the house, but no chaplain. You would confer on us the GREATEST pleasure, and would at the same time secure your doctor's object, if you would come down there and spend with us the three or four months which will elapse before our return to town. You can say mass at your own hour, observe your own ways in everything, and feel all the time, I hope, perfectly at home. Do, pray, seriously think of this. ...  Wife and child well.
Yrs affly,
JAMES R. HOPE.

I subjoin a few lines from Dr. Newman's answer to this invitation (which at first he was unable to accept):--

It would be a great pleasure to spend some time with you, and then I have ever had the extremest sympathy for Walter Scott, that it would delight me to see his place. When he was dying I was saying prayers (whatever they were worth) for him continually, thinking of Keble's words, 'Think on the minstrel as ye kneel.'

(Dr. Newman to J. R. H. from Edgbaston, Birmingham,
Oct. 29, '52.)

Not less interesting is a letter in which he recalls this visit, years
after. Writing to Mr. Hope-Scott on Christmas Eve, 1857 [compare p. 131],

Dr. Newman says:--

I am glad to call to mind and commemorate by a letter the pleasant days I
passed in the North this time five years. Five years has a melancholy sound to me now, for it is like a passing-bell, knolling away time. I hope it is not wrong to say that the passage of time is now sad to me as well as
awful, because it brings before me how much I ought to have done, how much I have to do, and how little time I have to do it in....

Ornsby, Hope-Scott, 2007, p. 103f

see on-line http://www.dominiopublico.gov.br/download/texto/gu007975.PDF

For the end of the Scott family line consult

http://www.thepeerage.com/p4690.htm#i46900