Scots of Harden

The Scots of Harden


Hugh Scott, the son of Mr Walter Scott and Lady Diana, eleventh Baron of Harden, was born in 1758.
He was elected member of Parliament for Berwickshire in 1780-an honor which lost him a fine estate.
( See vol 1  404) He married in 1795 Harriet, daughter of Hans Maurice Count de Bruhl Saxon Ambassador at the British Court.  Sir Walter Scott, then a young man, was introduced to the lady shortly after marriage, and she gave him great assistance in his translations from the German.
He used to say that she was the first woman of real fashion that took him up, that she used the privilege of her sex and station in the truest spirit of kindness, set him right as to a thousand little
trifles which no one else could have ventured to notice, and, in short, did for him what no one but an
elegant woman can do for a young man whose early days have been spent in narrow and provincial
circles.  She continued through life his attached friend, and the letters which he wrote to her
( the last of them from Naples 1832) show how cordially he reciprocated her esteem and regard.
 Of Harden himself, Sir Walter wrote to the Duke of Buccleuch in 1817, I have known Harden long,
and most intimately- a more respectable man, either fir feeling, or talent, or knowledge of human life,
is rarely to be met with.