Abb Fab - The Women of Abbotsford: Anne Rutherford

History has not always remembered women on their own terms. Women’s identities have often been framed through the achievements of fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons. Yet within Abbotsford, women shaped the very heart of what we hold dear. 

Among these remarkable women was Anne Rutherford. Scott’s mother, but so much more, she was a woman of intellect, literary taste, and imagination, whose influence shaped not only her son but Abbotsford as we know it.

Anne Rutherford (1733-1819) grew up in the heart of the Scottish Enlightenment. Raised within a distinguished academic household, she was surrounded by ideas, scholarship and scientific discovery from an early age. 

Anne's father, Dr John Rutherford, was a leading physician and professor of medicine at Edinburgh University. In comparison, her half-brother Daniel became a respected physician and chemist. Within this environment, Anne developed a deep familiarity with learning, discipline, and intellectual curiosity, qualities she later carried into her own family life. 

Anne must have received a good education and been passionate about literature. She loved ballads and folk traditions, and it is not a stretch of the imagination to assume that she was a great influence on her son. He himself describes her as combining "...a light and happy temper of mind..." with a "...strong turn to study poetry and works of the imagination". She has "...good natural taste and great feeling" and taught him not only to look for excitement in literature but also for worthy sentiment. 

Scott remained very close to his mother until she died. She was the first to find out when he had met his future wife, Charlotte, and he was keen that she should approve.

Two images exist of Anne, one as a rather glamorous younger woman with a fashionable blue mantle with fur trimmings and pearl jewellery, and it is easy to find in her the woman with the 'light and happy temper'.

The painting by John Watson Gordon from the Chinese drawing room (shown above) at Abbotsford depicts her as an older matriarch, complete with a lace cap, and hints of the personal tragedies that were to befall her. 

In 1758, as it would be expected from a good middle-class girl, she married Walter Scott, a promising young lawyer (later a Writer to the Signet), and they set up home in College Wynd, just off the High Street in Edinburgh’s Old Town. Walter did do rather well, and they were one of the first upper-middle-class families to escape the overcrowded conditions of the Old Town in favour of the ultra-modern ‘new estate’ going up in George Square, now home of Edinburgh University. Anne bore Walter 12 children, not unusual for the time, but sadly, only five of them survived into adulthood.

Luckily, the future poet and novelist was one of them.

Even with Anne’s connections to the most advanced medical school in the country, she could not beat the odds. Around 1800, over a quarter of babies born would not be expected to survive the first year.  

One of the most moving objects in our collection is a silk purse that belonged to Anne. It was clearly very dear to Scott himself, as it was found tucked carefully in his desk. In it, Anne carefully preserved, in neatly folded and labelled parcels of paper, locks of hair from all her children. A bundle of heartbreak, which speaks volumes to the pain mothers and fathers of the period suffered regularly.  

Thanks to a friend of Abbotsford, Mike Rutherfoord, we have been made aware of an additional portrait of Anne, attributed to Henry Raeburn. He also made us aware of this quote by the Rev. J. Russell who in his Reminiscences of Yarrow (1894 edition) says: ‘It was from his mother that he [SWS] inherited his talents. She had mental powers of a high order, and as the daughter of an eminently learned physician, she had received the best education of the day and was noted for her various accomplishments.  By no means comely, at least after the bloom of youth, she was still studious of her personal appearance;  and when she sat for her portrait to Raeburn, her instruction to the artist was, " Mak' me bonnie." ‘   Which portrait this refers to is anyone’s guess.

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Next month, we look at Scott’s wife, Charlotte Charpentier.