Dated: Edinburgh, 2 November & 7 December 1830.
Description: printed bifolium, 25.5 x 20.2 cm., wove paper, with manuscript note signed by creditors Nicholson & Kay, annotations of Robertson, and postal stamps.

Condition: very good, quite dirty and worn along the original folds, roughly opened at the red wax seal.

Creditors of the estate of Sir Walter Scott

An intriguing survivor, shedding light on the affairs of Sir Walter Scott after his bankruptcy, signed by two artisans responsible for the decoration of Abbotsford.

The great novelist Scott (1771—1832) was at the height of his fame when the 1825 banking crisis ruined him. Unwilling to declare himself bankrupt nor accept financial support, he chose to put his income in trust and write himself into solvency, keeping up a prodigious output until his death. The present document is a fascinating insight into this period, showing how his creditors intervened to allow Scott to keep the elaborate fit-out of his house Abbotsford, no small concession given the two signatories here.

The first two pages record the November resolution of the creditors of Scott and of the printing firm of James Ballantyne & Co., proposing that Scott “be requested to accept of his Furniture, Plate, Linens, Paintings, Library, and Curiosities of every description, as the best means the Creditors have of expressing their very high sense of his most honourable conduct; and in grateful acknowledgment for the unparalleled and most successful exertions he had made, and continues to make for them,” followed by a long printed list of 25 signatories.

The third page announces the follow-up meeting to be held at the Royal Exchange Coffee House in Edinburgh on 17 December 1830, encouraging the attendance of trustees or their proxies. Appended to this page is a manuscript note addressed to one T.R. Robertson Esq., begging that he agree to the measure on behalf of Nicholson and Hay.

The meaning of this is clarified by the address panel on the fourth page: the document had clearly first been sent to “Messrs. Nicholson & Hay, Painters” and they have struck through their address and over-written it, forwarding it to their legal representative Robertson in Brown Square, Edinburgh. Two postal stamps are both dated 8 December, a docket notes that this was the “mandate” of the two men and there are a series of calculations (presumably regarding monies owed).

The document thus connects Scott with David Ramsay Hay (1798—1866) the artist and writer. As a young man Hay had been commissioned by Scott to paint a favourite cat, and it was Scott who encouraged the young artist to specialise in house decoration, employing him to decorate Abbotsford, a task that began in earnest in 1820. Hay’s partner during this era, and the other signatory here, was George Nicholson, the lesser-known brother of the painter William Nicholson (1781—1844) who took several portraits of Scott. The partnership of Nicholson & Hay had supported Scott in his taste for rich hangings, elaborate decorative work of carved oak, painted surfaces in imitation oak grain, the whole highlighted with brightly coloured heraldic devices (see the description in the sixth edition of Hay’s work on Harmonious Colouring)..

References: Hay, The Laws of Harmonious Colouring (1847); McKinstry & Fletcher, ‘The Personal Account Books of Sir Walter Scott’ (2002); ODNB.