Description
Mahogany sloped writing desk given by Sir Walter Scott to William Laidlaw (1785-1840) , 97 x 75 x 103cm., together with items in the desk, including a letter regarding the loan of the desk to the Inverness Museum (1952), 28 returned cheques, Private Account, Commerical Bank of Scotland, Tain, signed by William Laidlaw (1841-42), printed Memorial Inscription for Thomas Purdie, Wood-Forester at Abbotsford (1829) endorsed on verso "received from S.W. Scott for the Messrs Smith direction about a monument for Thomas Purdie", game duty certificate issued to Thomas Purdie, Abbotsford (1824), receipt to J.G. Lockhart for assessed taxes in Roxburghshire, (30 June 1826), an A.L.S. from Mrs J. Laidlaw to Miss Katherine Laidlaw (1841), an A.L.S. from W. Blackwood to James Ballantyne regarding the estates of Kailzie and Horsburgh (1841), 1826 medal of Walter Scott by Thomas Stothard, a letter gifting the desk and its contents by Kate Carruthers to Robert Ballantyne Carruthers (1915), and several items relating to Laidlaw's period at Balnagown
Footnote
Provenance: Ballantyne family, by descent.
Note: William Laidlaw (1780–1845) steward and amanuensis to Walter Scott, and author of a well-known ballad, Lucy's Flittin. In 1817 Laidlaw became steward to Sir Walter Scott at Abbotsford. In 1819, when Scott was recovering from an illness, Laidlaw and John Ballantyne wrote to his dictation most of The Bride of Lammermoor, and subsequently The Legend of Montrose, and nearly all Ivanhoe. St. Ronan's Well may have been due to Laidlaw's suggestion that Scott should devote a novel to "Melrose in July 1823", according to John Gibson Lockhart.
In the author's "General Preface" to the edition of Waverley published in 1829, the first which bore his name on the title-page, Scott describes how he found the first portion of Waverley in a drawer of this desk: "Be that as it may, this portion of the manuscript was laid aside in the drawers of the old writing-desk, which on my first coming to Abbotsford, in 1811, was placed in a lumber garret, and entirely forgotten.... Thus though I sometimes, among other literary avocations, turned my thoughts to the continuation of the romance which I had commenced, yet as I could not find what I had already written, after seaching such repositories as were within my reach, and was too indolent to attempt to write it anew from memory, I as often laid aside all thoughts of that nature.... I happened to want some fishing-tackle for the use of a guest, when it occurred to me to search the old writing-desk already mentioned, in which I used to keep articles of that nature. I got access to it with some difficulty; and in looking for lines and flies the long-lost manuscript presented itself. I immediately set to work to complete it according to my original purpose".
Extract from Article "Sir Walter Scott" in Chamber's Cyclopaedia of English Literature:
"So early as 1805, before his great poems were produced, Scott had entered on the composition of Waverley, the first of his illustrious progeny of tales. He wrote about seven pages, evidently taking Fielding, in his grave descriptive and ironical vein, for his model; but, getting dissatisfied with his attempt, he threw it aside. Eight years afterwards he met accidentally with the fragment, and determined to finish the story. (He had put the Chapters aside, as he tells us, in a writing-desk wherein he used to keep fishing-tackle. The desk - a substantial old mahogany cabinet -and part of the fishing-tackle, are now in the family of Scott's friend Mr William Laidlaw."
Please note that the locket and mourning brooch belong to lot 79.