ABSTRACT
In the best traditions of Scott biography, the next selection comes from a partnership between a man and his son-in-law. Robert Carruthers, who had collaborated on other works with Robert Chambers, contributed his ‘Abbotsford Notanda’ to the 1871 edition of Chambers’s Life. In them he draws freely on the papers of his late father-in-law William Laidlaw, one of Scott’s best-loved friends and for many years his factor at Abbotsford. Laidlaw’s memoir of Scott is one of the most relaxed, entertaining, and in the end compassionate accounts available. In the ‘Abbotsford Notanda’ Carruthers mixes quotation from Laidlaw with commentary of his own, some of it on the idiosyncrasies of Laidlaw’s memoirs. Laidlaw and Scott were very close, and visits to Laidlaw’s house at Kaeside, on the hill overlooking the main house at Abbotsford, were an important part of Scott’s country life.
