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[image: boar's head with motto 'Numquam obliviscar']
25 Corso d'Italia Rome
March 13. 1932
Dear Mr. Buchan
You will I know be interested in any show of information regarding Sir Walter Scott, and though what I have to contribute is very slight it seems not to be known to others.
I was nettled in reading a review of Dame Una Pope-Hennessy's book to find a suggestion that Scotts' mother, born Rutherford, was an unknown person of no particular connections.
I think that what I know, which may or may not be known to others, shows conclusively that she was of the family of the
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Rutherfords of Jedburgh, who were famous five hundred years before the reviewer in question was ever heard of. They are mentioned, you will no doubt remember, in Barbour's Epic of the Bruce.
My information comes from conversation with my mother who was a Rutherford and who must have had it from her father and mother. This was that a female cousin of my grandfather Rutherford possessed several very personal relics of Sir Walter, including particularly his "black watch". I think it is hardly likely that this lady would have had such closely personal belongings of Sir Walter unless she had been nearly related to him. My mother often said that this old lady ought to have left these things to my grandfather but they had quarrelled, or at least there was a coolness between them, so that at her death, the things were all sold - and I presume have now passed into some collection.
My grandfather, though he lived in England, used occasionally to visit Jedburgh which was his native place. I have a miniature of his grandfather - my own great-great-great-grandfather who was "William, third son of Sir John Rutherford of that ilk".
I wish that I had more details that I could give you, but my grandfather has been dead more than fifty years and my mother more than
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twenty. I am probably the only member of my family who knows even as much as this - but I have thought it was just worth communicating to you as it may corroborate any information obtained from other sources.
I am looking forward with great pleasure to reading your biography of Sir Walter. May I thank you, since I happen to be writing, for the immense pleasure that some of your books have given me. Only a day or two ago I was re-reading the "Dancing Floor", which is one of my especial favourites.
Believe me
Your sincerely
David Randall-MacIver
