This ordinary stained beech armchair, right, is aid to have accommodated the ample figure of Nicol Jarvie on the numerous occasions that he rested in the
public house (that now bears his name) in the Trossachs village of Aberfoyle.
“Petulant, conceited, purse-proud, tactless and intensely
prejudiced,” says Brewster’s Dictionary of Mr Jarvie, though whether this is a description of the fictional Jarvie in Sir Walter Scott’s novel Rob Roy, published in 1819, or the real Jarvie who lived 70 years earlier is open to question.
The auctioneers declined to give a date to the chair although a brass plaque claiming Jarvie’s patronage was clearly Victorian.
Auctioneer Sebastian Pryke said the chair seemed to be late 18th century, and its provenance was certainly believed by Scottish private collectors who contested it to £6500.
£6500 says Rob Roy’s large kinsman sat here...
For a Scottish antique, no provenance is more guaranteed to stir the blood than a connection, however tenuous, with a romantic outlaw. At Lyon & Turnbull’s sale on 26 March the link was Rob Roy McGregor, or at least the cattle rustler’s loyal kinsman and Glasgow magistrate Baillie Nicol Jarvie.
