It is not correct, however, in spite of the striking resemblances, to speak of Traquair House as the 'original' of Tully Veolan. Scott himself says in his note in the edition of 1829, 'There is no particular mansion described under the name of Tully Veolan; but the peculiarities of description occur in various old Scottish seats.' Among these were the house of Sir George Warrender upon Bruntsfield Links; the old house of Ravelston, owned by Sir Alexander Keith, the author's friend and kinsman, from which he took some hints for the garden; and the house of Dean, near Edinburgh. He adds,'The author has, however, been informed that the house of Grandtully resembles that of the Baron of Bradwardine still more than any of the above.'
Acting upon this hint, when we were making the city of Perth our centre, we took a long journey by motor with Grandtully Castle as the objective point. I doubt if there is a more beautiful drive in all Scotland. We followed the left bank of the river Tay through a fertile { 110} valley of surpassing loveliness. In the whole journey of nearly one hundred miles it seemed as though there was never a blot on the landscape. No neglected farms, no rough patches of naked earth, no tumble-down fences, no unsightly railroad excavations nor bare embankments, no swamps filled with fallen timber, no hideous bill-boards, none of the hundreds of unsightly objects which mar the scenery of so many country drives. Everything seemed well kept. The big estates were filled with beautiful trees and shrubs, many of them in full bloom, and the humbler places did equally well, though on a smaller scale. I remember passing a hedge of beeches, half a mile long, the trees growing ninety feet high and so close together as to make a wall impenetrable to the sunlight. I was told that this hedge was trimmed once in three years at an expense of fifteen hundred dollars each time. This is only one item in the care of a large estate. We passed the park and palace of Scone, where the coronation stone was kept before its removal to Westminster Abbey, and from which it received its name. Farther to the north we stopped a few minutes at Campsie Linn, which I shall mention later in connection with 'The Fair Maid of Perth.' A little beyond Cargill our course turned sharply to the West, although the main road continues to the north until it reaches Blairgowrie, some two or three miles beyond which is another 'original' of Tully Veolan, the house of Craighall. Unfortunately lack of time did not permit a visit to this place, but I must digress long enough to explain its significance. It was the seat of the Rattray family, who were related to William Clerk, one of Scott's most intimate companions of the early days { 111} spent among the law courts of Edinburgh. During one of the Highland excursions the friends stopped at Craighall. When 'Waverley' came out, twenty-one years later, Mr. Clerk was so much struck with the resemblance of Tully Veolan to the old mansion of the Rattrays that he immediately said, 'This is Scott's.' The reason for the conviction was probably not so much the similarity of the real house to the fictitious one as the recollection of a little incident of the early excursion. Clerk, seeing the smoke of a little hamlet before them, when they were tired and heated from their journey, is said to have exclaimed, 'How agreeable if we should here fall in with one of those signposts where a red lion predominates over a punch-bowl!' In spite of the lapse of so many years, Clerk recognized his own expression (with which he knew Scott had been particularly amused) in that part of the description of Tully Veolan where 'a huge bear, carved in stone, predominated over a large stone basin.'