Abb Fab: Jane Jobson - A Golden Gift

Some 44 years ago, a relatively new and inexperienced curator at the National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland (now the National Museums Scotland) was perusing a catalogue for a prestigious auction of Scottish material by Sotheby’s at Gleneagles Hotel. His eye was caught by an intriguing item, described as a gold snuff box presented to a Rev David Dickson, ‘with a Scott inscription’! At the time, the curator’s knowledge of Sir Walter Scott’s family was not as good as it should have been, but thankfully, his much more expert boss’s was, and he agreed that the box should be bought for the national collections. This handsome box turns out to be a rare and intriguing memento of the marriage of one of Abbotsford’s sadly less well-known ladies, Jane Jobson, to Scott’s son and heir, Walter, which took place on 3 February 1825.

The box is a simple but elegant example of a rectangular snuff box. Snuff taking was something of a national addiction in Scotland at the time, and snuff boxes of all kinds were common gifts, signifying friendship and respect. With delicate chased foliate decoration around the rim, it is fully hallmarked to indicate an Edinburgh goldsmith, John Graham, in 1825 and is made of 18 carat gold. It measures 3 inches by 2 inches by 1 inch high and weighs in at a very respectable 3 ½ ounces.

However, the most important part of the box is the engraved dedicatory inscription on the lid:

‘To/The Revd. David Dickson D.D./ from Jane Jobson and Walter Scott/ In grateful remembrance for all his kindness/3rd day of Febry. 1825’.

The fact that Jane comes first in the inscription is significant, indicating that while the happy couple both wanted to thank the Rev Dickson, it was particularly important to Jane.  Let’s find out why.

Jane was the only child of William Jobson, a successful Dundee merchant who had purchased the substantial estate of Lochore in Fife, and his wife, Rachel Stewart. As her father had died in 1822, Jane was heiress to a considerable fortune, and one which her devoted (Scott senior would say over-protective!) mother was determined to shield from any predatory suitors!

Thankfully for the future happiness of Jane and young Walter, Mrs Jobson was the sister of Margaret, the wife of Sir Walter’s old friend Sir Adam Ferguson, and the Fergusons were determined to play matchmakers. They brought their niece Jane to a dinner given by Sir Walter in his Castle Street home in the spring of 1824, where she impressed Scott as ‘as a very sweet, pleasant young woman…with none of the conceit of an heiress’. Sir Walter and the Fergusons were thereafter determined to engineer a courtship between the two.

Young Walter was at this time 23 and doing well in the army, with considerable prospects. He was ‘unromantically practical’ too and wanted to know about the extent of Jane’s estate, and if her family was a ‘good’ one, and even if it was, he was not prepared to give up his name or even hyphenate it with Jobson! Scott’s correspondence about these delicate matters is entertaining; he compares the situation to the matrimonial aspirations and machinations in the first scene of Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor. Thankfully, young Walter was soon convinced of all of Jane’s charms.

But one major stumbling block to the marriage remained: the mother of the proposed bride. Mrs Jobson was, in Sir Walter’s opinion, ‘a Tartar…[with] a singularly unhappy manner which she has not, however, transmitted to Jane’.   Described as a strait-laced Presbyterian dragon by one of Scott’s biographers, Mrs Jobson’s resistance to the match had to be overcome before any progress could be made. And her resistance was fierce - Scott says she saw ‘nothing but damnation in her daughter marrying a dissolute soldier (all soldiers were dissolute), the son of a profane poet (all poets were profane)’. Thankfully, throughout her mother’s ‘squalls’, Jane remained quietly determined to marry Walter.

It appears that this is where the Revered David Dickson enters the picture. He was a minister at St Cuthbert's Church in Edinburgh, the Jobsons’ own church, close to their home at Shandwick Place and was fond of Jane. It also no doubt helped that his wife, Janet, was a member of the Jobson family!  He was undoubtedly the ‘very sensible, though high-flying divine…one of the great guns’ of the Presbyterian congregation that Scott says helped to break down the mother’s resistance, having bombarded her with a ‘twelve-pound text’. The Reverend Dickson’s ‘text’ worked, and it was he who eventually conducted the couple’s marriage ceremony in the Jobsons’ Edinburgh house on 3 February 1825.

Dickson was clearly well-liked and respected, not only by the Scott and Jobson families, but also by his whole congregation. Educated at Edinburgh University, he entered the ministry in 1801 and became a minister at St Cuthbert's in 1803, where he became well known and loved for his benevolent and missionary work. The splendid monument to him and his works can still be seen on the west end of St. Cuthbert's Church.  

It is no wonder that Jane and Walter presented him with such a fine and important memento of their happy day.

My grateful thanks to Oliver Taylor of National Museums Scotland for reminding an aged and forgetful old curator of the box’s details and for permission to use the image.

George Dalgleish, Trustee

Next month, we will look at Charlotte Hope Scott.

Click here to read last month's Abb Fab post, where we learn about Anne Scott