2003

Our President in 2003/4 was:

Dame Jean Maxwell-Scott DCVO

Professor Ian Campbell presided and delivered the Toast to Sir Walter at our 95th Annual Dinner on Friday 5th March 2004 in The Balmoral Hotel, Edinburgh

Dame Jean Mary Monica Maxwell-Scott, DCVO was the Laird and Chatelaine of Abbotsford which she and her elder sister, Patricia Maxwell-Scott, opened to the public, restored to its former glory, and ran for nearly five decades. She was the great-great-great-granddaughter of the novelist Sir Walter Scott, and on her death was his last direct descendant to live in Abbotsford. She was lady-in-waiting to Princess Alice, Duchess of Gloucester, from 1959 to 2004.

Jean Maxwell-Scott was born on 8 June 1923 at Abbotsford, near Galashiels, Roxburghshire, the granddaughter of Mary Monica Maxwell-Scott and the younger daughter of Major General Sir Walter Joseph Constable Maxwell-Scott, 1st Baronet, and his first wife Mairi, daughter of Lt-Col Stewart of Lunga. Her mother died when she was 15 months old. When she was five, her father married Marie-Louise, Madame des Sincay, daughter of Major John Logan of the US Cavalry. Jean was educated at the Convent Des Oiseaux, Westgate-on-Sea, Kent.

Her sister inherited Abbotsford on their father's death in 1954, and ran the house as a visitor attraction for the rest of her life. They did not install electricity until 1962. One or both of the sisters would greet parties themselves. In the 1960s, they had 50,000 visitors a year, peaking in the 1980s at 86,000.

Not long before she died, she bemoaned the ignorance of visitors to the house:

"Only the Russians and eastern Europeans seem to read any Scott at school ... Now it's sometimes, 'Where are his Antarctic things?' Occasionally one has to be terribly tactful."

In 1959, she was appointed lady-in-waiting to Princess Alice, Duchess of Gloucester, who lived nearby, a role she held until her death in 2004.

Dame Jean Maxwell-Scott died at Abbotsford, Roxburghshire on 5 May 2004, aged 80. Patricia had been briefly married; Jean never married and neither sister had children.

She was made Commander of the Royal Victorian Order at the 1969 Birthday Honours, then Dame Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (DCVO) in the 1984 Birthday Honours.

Text source: wikipedia