At this period his mother was still alive, and the farm was worked by one of his brothers. Most of the family had done well. One sister, as we have already seen, had married Mr. Dickson, who had risen both to moderate affluence and to considerable fame as a botanist. Another had found a husband in a well-to-do farmer in the neighbourhood. His brother Adam had gone through the same course as himself, and had become established as a doctor in Gravesend; while a second brother, Alexander, had been made under-sheriff for the county, the sheriff-principal being Sir Walter Scott.
Of this brother Scott himself gives us a sketch in his introduction to the “Lady of the Lake,” when recalling his doubts of the poem’s success:--
“I remember that about the same time a friend (Arch. Park) started in to ‘heeze up my hope,’ like the sportsman with his cutty gun in the old song. He was bred a farmer, but a man of powerful understanding, natural good taste, and warm poetical feeling, perfectly competent to supply the wants of an imperfect or irregular education. He was a passionate admirer of field sports, which we often pursued together.” And then Scott goes on to tell how he was in the habit of reading the poem to him to experiment as to the effect produced on one who was “but too favourable a representative of readers at large.” Archibald Park remained in Scott’s employment for many years, and was frequently his companion in his mountain rides.
In 1799, the Government made certain proposals to Park relative to his going out in some official capacity to New South Wales. Of this, however, nothing came, though whether the fault lay with the Government or with the explorer is not known.
The natural consequences of idleness to a man of Park’s personality and past life soon became apparent. With a wife of no particular depth of character and no special mental attainments, however attractive and amiable she might otherwise be, there could be but small absorption of his thoughts. With no other society, and no work to keep him occupied, there could be but one result--restlessness and revolt against the position in which he found himself, and the gradual upgrowth of the old longings and ideas--the irrepressible fever of travel. Coincidently he began to forget the hardships and dangers he had experienced, and as they grew less and less vivid, and gradually dropped into the background of his memory, the fascination of discovery, of travel in strange lands and among strange peoples--the wish to settle the unsolved mystery of the Niger--began anew to assert their power and possess him with ever-growing force.