Cottage-Melrose-Scotland

William Seltzer Rice

Melrose is a small town in the Scottish Borders, residing in the flats along the Tweed River, its collection of sandstone cottages built in the 18th century crowding near the ruins of the Melrose Abbey. Here, Rice has captured one such structure illuminated by a full moon, a single window aglow with the light of a cozy fire.

Rice was sometimes drawn to landscapes and towns that harbored a sense of danger or loneliness, perhaps owing to their then-isolated locales or rough terrains: stark Alaskan glaciers; the rough cliffsides of the California coast; the unforgiving Sierra Nevada mountains in winter. Yet often in these harrowing places he always found the spots of tranquility. He portrays this quiet cottage on a clear night, perhaps in summer when such a house would accommodate the trout fishermen who frequented the Tweed; and only steps away lay the Melrose Abbey, stark and haunting in its ruinous state, and purportedly holding the heart of King Robert the Bruce.